.

XII

Fatherlands! Air and earth and fire and water!
Elements indestructible, beginning
And end of life, first joy and last of mine!
You I shall find again when I pass on

To the graves' calm. The people of the dreams
Within me, airlike, unto air shall pass;
My reason, fire-like, unto lasting fire;
My passions' craze unto the billows' madness;

Even my dust-born body, unto dust;
And I shall be again air, earth, fire, water;
And from the air of dreams, and from the flames

Of thought, and from the flesh that shall be dust,
And from the passions' sea, ever shall rise
A breath of sound like a soft lyre's complaint.

THE SONNETS

From their foreign land and precious,
From their nest in green, I took
Red-plumed birds; and then I closed them
In a cage of woven gold.

And the cage of woven gold
Then became a second nest;
On our shores the birds have found
A new, precious fatherland.

Softly here they shake their feathers;
Swiftly sing of worlds and souls
Deep and spacious; or they mingle

Lightning-like their tears and smiles.
And though small and as of coral,
Yet they sing with accents loud.

_1896._

EPIPHANY

With chariot drawn by star-plumed peacocks, lo,
The goddess of desires before her people
Is revealed! She passes on, youth's joyful shout
And torture, dragging my eighteen years behind.

Snowflakes became a world; and, taking life
As substance, made her body and her thought.
Upon her royal brow, birds strange and wild,
Scorn's breed, have built their nest and there abide.

Upon her path, in vain I build the palace
Of virgin dreams with virgin gold for her,
Raising a throne of diamonds in its midst.

She passes on her starlit chariot;
And as if filled with golden dreams divine,
She does not even look upon my palace!

_1895._

MAKARIA[17]

To you, who dawned before me, offspring of
The great abyss and flower of foaming billows!
To you, whom with their love all things embrace,
And who stir tempests in a statue's depths!

To you, O woman and O virgin, myrrhs,
Fruit, frankincense, I offer recklessly!
To you, the music of the world! To you,
My songs' pure foam, songs that your vision fills!

For you can love, remember, understand.
Before I saw you in the world's great night,
You shone upon my mother's lighted face.

Your worshipper into the world I came;
Your name I knew not, and in love's sweet font
I called you with the name _Makaria_!