IDYL
by: Pedro Requena Legarreta
(1893-1918)
- HE opal-breasted morning of the
spring
- Scarce o'er the meads her luminous urn can swing.
-
- When from the nests the tremulous light flute
- Of songs comes thawing, and the echoes mute
-
- Awake and mingle with the distant brawl
- Of lowing cattle and the shepherds' call:
-
- 'Twould seem that, falling from the morning's urn,
- Each ray of light would into singing turn.--
-
- Alone amid the pasture's splendid breast
- There stands a tree, a shadowy poem blest.
-
- Among its prescient leaves there lurks a trace
- Of old-world sadness and of pastoral grace;
-
- And bending o'er the field, the green gargoyle
- Of one long branch from out the trunk would coil.
-
- A-straddle on the branch a maiden rides,
- As though a nymph some haughty centaur guides;
-
- Blonde is the maid, and naked, tall and fair,
- With glow transparent as the morning air.
-
- A sudden breath along the meadow grass
- Stirs with a kiss the branch ere it would pass.
-
- And she, whom hasty breaths of fever seize,
- Grips the bough tighter with her snowy knees.
-
- The while the icy jewels of the dew
- Send a sharp chill her silken body through.
-
- Her locks float back in airy coronal
- Above her shoulders, as the dawn rain's fall;
-
- And green and rose the shifting boughs appear
- Like some great butterfly her lips a-near.
-
- She sways a moment, then, as some divine
- Young nymph that Jove enamored would entwine,
-
- Her scarlet kisses all the green bough cover,--
- And the tree trembles,--as it were her lover--
--Translated by Garret Strange
"Idyl" is reprinted from
Hispanic Anthology: Poems Translated from the Spanish by English
and North American Poets. Ed. Thomas Walsh. New York: G.P.
Putnam's Sons, 1920. |
MORE POEMS BY PEDRO REQUENA LEGARRETA |
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