Page:Darío - Eleven Poems.djvu/31



(Translated by Thomas Walsh)

AM the singer who of late put by The verse azulean and the chant profane, Across whose nights a rossignol would cry And prove himself a lark at morn again.

Lord was I of my garden-place of dreams, Of heaping roses and swan-haunted brakes; Lord of the doves; lord of the silver streams, Of gondolas and lilies on the lakes.

And very eighteenth century; both old And very modern; bold, cosmopolite; Like Hugo daring, like Verlaine half-told, And thirsting for illusions infinite.

From childhood it was sorrow that I knew; My youth—was ever youth my own indeed?— Its roses still their perfume round me strew, Their perfume of a melancholy seed—

A rainless colt my instinct galloped free, My youth bestrode a colt without a rein; Intoxicate I went, a belted blade with me; If I fell not—'twas God who did sustain.

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