Page:Poems (Eminescu).pdf/40

 What the price of life for thee is, what the price of death may be. Poisoned with sweet melancholy, spellbound as thou art, she seems Queen of queens, the fairest empress of thy world of thoughts and dreams: In thy fancy, with her tearful eyes in which her love does shine, Brighter she would seem than Venus rising from the foamy brine: In the chaos of oblivion though the hours may run so fast, For thee she’ll be always dearer every day unto the last. Vain illusions! Dost thou not see from her look, from her whole face, That her attitude is habit, and her smile but a grimace, That here all her splendid beauty wasteth like a useless thing, That her soul’s most precious treasure she is idly squandering? With its seven strings thy tuneful lyre accompanies in vain With its cadences harmonious thy melodious wailful strain; Vainly does thy mind transfigure fairylike this world of ours, Like the frost that paints on windows an embroidery of flowers, When thy heart is full of summer; vainly now thy soul endears Her proud head to sanctify it, on her soft hair fall thy tears. No, she cannot see that ’tis not thou who wantest her… in thee Is a daemon that is thirsting after her sweet light, and he Cries and laughs,—O the poor daemon—but himself he hears not, and If he longs for her ’tis only his own self to understand; So he pineth like a sculptor to whom neither arm was left, Like the great inspired composer who of hearing was bereft, While his soul was soaring upwards in the music of the spheres, Whose harmonious, rhythmic rolling in his mind he always hears. He does not ask her to offer on an altar her own life, As in olden times fell victim to the high priest’s sacred knife Many pure and lovely virgins, who with holy rites were slain, Having stood as sculptor’s models for a goddess in a fane. She might help him to discover his own self, aloft to strive, And with his own fire consumèd, to a new life to revive; With his wild unsated passion, he, inspired by her, would try, In Adonic verse, like Horace, skilfully his tongue to ply; In his dream would bring the murmur of the springs, all flowers vernal, Cooling shadows of deep forests and the stars’ bright fire eternal, And in that mysterious moment, feeling happy, in his eyes The antique blest world with glamour to new life would seem to rise, And with deepest passion kneeling he would praise, he would adore her, In her youthful eyes up looking, for her grace, he would implore her, In his arms would keep her ever, on his bosom warm infold,