lidsaLyric
There is no splendour in the sun
While you are absent from my arms,
And though I search till day is done
Remission in oblivion,
Watching the busy crowd go past,
Driving the brain, callousing palms,
No high philosophy rings true
Nor can contentment come, till you
Bring peace of mind, and rest at last.
I turn you out of doors
tenant desire
you pay no rent
I turn you out of doors
all my best rooms are yours
the brain and heart
depart
I turn you out of doors
throw water on the fire
I turn you out of doors
stubborn desire
—translated from the French by Edward Lucie-Smith
Echo
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
Will She Come
Every morning hears me query:
Will she come to-day?
Every evening answers, weary:
Still she stays away.
In my nights of lonely weeping,
Sleep I never know;
Dreaming, like a man half sleeping,
Through the day I go.
—translated from the German by Ernest Beard
The Lost Mistress
All’s over, then: does truth sound bitter
As one at first believes?
Hark, ’tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter
About your cottage eaves!
And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
I noticed that, today;
One day more bursts them open fully
—You know the red turns grey.
Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest?
May I take your hand in mine?
Mere friends are we,—well, friends the merest
Keep much that I resign:
For each glance of the eye so bright and black.
Though I keep with heart’s endeavour,—
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
Though it stay in my soul for ever!—
Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;
I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!
A Farewell to a Friend
With a blue line of mountains north of the wall,
And east of the city a white curve of water,
Here you must leave me and drift away
Like a loosened water-plant hundreds of miles.…
I shall think of you in a floating cloud;
So in the sunset think of me.
… We wave our hands to say good-bye,
And my horse is neighing again and again.
—translated from the Chinese by Witter Bynner
lidsafrom Cloud Messenger
In the twisting stream I see the play of thy eyebrows;
in the eye of the doe I see thy glance;
In the peacock’s tail the luxury of thy hair.
In the moon I see the beauty of thy face,
and in the priy
ngu I see thy slender limbs.
But ah! thy likeness united all in one place I see nowhere!
I paint thee oft as angry, red colors on smooth stones,
and would paint my own face near to thine.
But the tear rises in my eye and darkness covers my sight.
Even here [in the attempt to paint us united] our evil fate keeps us apart!
When the gods of the forest see me,
how I stretch out my arms to thee to draw thee to my breast,—
then, I think, from their eyes will come the tears,
which like large pearls glitter on the fresh buds.
—translated from the Sanskrit by Max Müller ü
Should you refuse me
do you think I would force you?
no, I would remain
Confused in love as roots of rush
and still keep longing for you
—translated from the Japanese by Harold Wright
from Days of Creation
He who drinks of Circe’s wine,
Honey-ripened on the vine,
And meets the Goddess’ eyes divine—
He’ll never return to Ithaca.
Adrift upon the reckless sea,
Heart embracing eagerly
Its terror and its ecstasy—
He’ll never return to Ithaca.
See the ivory shuttle fly,
Weaving splendour into the tapestry!
Wise Penelope will cry—
He’ll never return to Ithaca.
The good ship anchored in the bay,
Tangled in her arms he lay,
Dreaming that Greece had won the day—
He’ll never return to Ithaca.
For only Virtue’s herb can quell,
Gift of the Gods, this binding spell …
Unless he pass the Gates of Hell—
He’ll never return to Ithaca.
Love Song
We have the utmost regard for each other at this time and place, but soon will be apart.
My dear whenever you gaze upon the Morning Star you will think of me.
When you do this it will be as if we are beholding one another.
—translated from the Lakota (Native American) by Kevin Locke
The Wanderer
I seek a shore
as a weather-beaten sailor
lost amid the seas of the world,
searching in the folds of the wind
for a haven and a refuge
compassionate and warm
to keep the woes of life at bay.
A Sinbad am I,
the oceans are my thoughts,
the seas my feelings,
carrying me
to you
on the winds of passion
across the vast expanses of the world.
on the crest of every wave
washed against the coastal cliffs,
the rocks of separation
on which all my ships have foundered,
their sails utterly torn
to shrouds
for lost desires.
Where are you
amid the terrible storms?
Pity me,
come forth,
make quiet approach,
carry your windblown sailor,
convey him safely ashore,
wash away his agony,
purge the wounds
of one who at your feet
bows down in meditative calm,
in sacred sanctuary.
—translated from the Arabic by the author
from Karkar Island Love Song
It’s been a long time since
I’ve seen your face sister
I have left you
For a very long time
But I still love you
And I still love you …
It is now afternoon and the place is getting dark
I sit and I think of you
Even though there is no way of me seeing you
I still love you
And I still love you
—translated from the Takia by Alida Gubag
The Lover Tells of the Rose in his Heart
All things uncomely and broken,
all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway,
the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman,
splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms
a rose in the deeps of my heart.
The wrong of unshapely things
is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew
and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water
remade, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms
a rose in the deeps of my heart.
Like the crane that cries
merely to be heard afar
in the dark of night
Must I only hear from you?
Will we never get to meet?
—translated from the Japanese by Harold Wright
To His Mistress in Absence
Far from thy dearest self, the scope
Of all my aims,
I waste in secret flames;
And only live because I hope.
O when will Fate restore
The joys, in whose bright fire
My expectation shall expire,
That I may live because I hope no more!
—translated from the Italian by Thomas Stanley
The First Day
I wish I could remember the first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me;
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say.
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it! Such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow.
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much!
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand!—Did one but know!
Through the evening mist
there flies a flock of wild geese
toward my loved one’s home
They are calling as they fly
and envy fills my heart
—translated from the Japanese by Harold Wright
My Heart with Hidden Tears is Swelling
My heart with hidden tears is swelling,
I muse upon the days long gone;
The world was then a cozy dwelling,
And people’s lives flowed smoothly on.
Now all’s at sixes and at sevens,
Our life’s a whirl, a strife for bread;
There is no God in all the heavens,
And down below the Devil’s dead.
And all things look so God-forsaken,
So topsy-turvy, cold, and bare;
And if our wee bit love were taken,
There’d be no living anywhere.
—translated from the German by Ernest Beard
Seven Years … and my Love
Like mercury, like the crucified,
My love escapes compassion
And is thirsty.
Like the light at sunset,
My love carries with it the hours of the day
And hides them in the chasms of the ocean.
Like one homeless,
My love is without shelter
And the tempest buffets and assails it from all directions.
Like the Orient,
What is most beautiful about my love is the past;
And like the Orient, it knows that there will be a Resurrection.
Fresh, washed in the stream,
And carrying with it the glory of the sunrise.
What is most beautiful about my love is its promise of days to come.
—translated from the Arabic by Suheil Bushrui
Tonight I Lurked
Tonight I lurked by your chamber
and saw you desolate and quiet;
in your eyes’ searching in the window,
you sought your soul that is lost—
You looked for the reward of youth—
and didn’t see, my love,
that like a frightened dove in your glass
my soul struggled and flapped.
—translated from the Hebrew by Atar Hadari
Love’s Complaint
At wave-bright Naniwa
The sedges grow, firm-rooted—
Firm were the words you spoke,
And tender, pledging me your love,
That it would endure through all the years;
And to you I yielded my heart,
Spotless as a polished mirror.
Never, from that day, like the seaweed
That sways to and fro with the waves,
Have I faltered in my fidelity,
But have trusted in you as in a great ship.
Is it the gods who have divided us?
Is it mortal men who intervene?
You come no more, who came so often,
Nor yet arrives a messenger with your letter.
There is—alas!—nothing I can do.
Though I sorrow the black night through
And all day till the red sun sinks,
It avails me nothing. Though I pine,
I know not how to soothe my heart’s pain.
Truly men call us ‘weak women’.
Crying like an infant,
And lingering around, I must still wait,
Wait impatiently for a message from you!
—translated from the Japanese by the Japanese Classics Translation Committee
Believe it Not
Believe it not, when in excess of sorrow
I murmur that my love for thee is o’er!
When ebbs the tide, think not the sea’s a traitor,—
He will return and love the land once more.
I still am pining, full of former passion:
To thee again my freedom I’ll restore,
E’en as the waves, with homeward murmur flowing,
Roll back from far to the beloved shore!
—translated from the Russian by John Pollen
from Pleasant Songs of the Sweetheart Who Meets You in the Fields
Without your love, my heart would beat no more;
Without your love, sweet cake seems only salt;
Without your love, sweet ‘shedeh’ turns to bile.
O listen, darling, my heart’s life needs your love;
For when you breathe, mine is the heart that beats.
—translated from the Ancient Egyptian by Ezra Pound and Noel Stock
The red leaves of oak
in the plain of Inami
appear in season
Yet, this longing for my love
does not have seeds in time
—translated from the Japanese by Harold Wright
Sonnet XIV
When welcome slumber locks my torpid frame,
I see thy spirit in the midnight dream;
Thine eyes that still in living lustre beam:
In all but frail mortality the same.
Ah! then, from earth and all its sorrows free,
Methinks I meet thee in each former scene;
Once the sweet shelter of a heart serene;
Now vocal only while I weep for thee.
For thee!—ah, no! From human ills secure.
Thy hallow’d soul exults in endless day;
’Tis I who linger on the toilsome way:
No balm relieves the anguish I endure;
Save the fond feeble hope that thou art near
To soothe my sufferings with an angel’s tear.
—translated from the Italian by Anne Bannerman
When spring arrives
the frost on the river’s moss
is melted away
In such a way my heart melts
over longing for your love
—translated from the Japanese by Harold Wright