. . come i gru van cantando lor lai, Facendo in aer di se lunga riga. -- DANTE
Black shadows fall From the lindens tall, That lift aloft their massive wall Against the southern sky;
And from the realms Of the shadowy elms A tide-like darkness overwhelms The fields that round us lie.
But the night is fair, And everywhere A warm, soft vapor fills the air, And distant sounds seem near,
And above, in the light Of the star-lit night, Swift birds of passage wing their flight Through the dewy atmosphere.
I hear the beat Of their pinions fleet, As from the land of snow and sleet They seek a southern lea.
I hear the cry Of their voices high Falling dreamily through the sky, But their forms I cannot see.
O, say not so! Those sounds that flow In murmurs of delight and woe Come not from wings of birds.
They are the throngs Of the poet's songs, Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs, The sound of winged words.
This is the cry Of souls, that high On toiling, beating pinions, fly, Seeking a warmer clime,
From their distant flight Through realms of light It falls into our world of night, With the murmuring sound of rhyme.
Of Prometheus, how undaunted On Olympus' shining bastions His audacious foot he planted, Myths are told and songs are chanted, Full of promptings and suggestions.
Beautiful is the tradition Of that flight through heavenly portals, The old classic superstition Of the theft and the transmission Of the fire of the Immortals!
First the deed of noble daring, Born of heavenward aspiration, Then the fire with mortals sharing, Then the vulture,--the despairing Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.
All is but a symbol painted Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer; Only those are crowned and sainted Who with grief have been acquainted, Making nations nobler, freer.
In their feverish exultations, In their triumph and their yearning, In their passionate pulsations, In their words among the nations, The Promethean fire is burning.
Shall it, then, be unavailing, All this toil for human culture? Through the cloud-rack, dark and trailing, Must they see above them sailing O'er life's barren crags the vulture?
Such a fate as this was Dante's, By defeat and exile maddened; Thus were Milton and Cervantes, Nature's priests and Corybantes, By affliction touched and saddened.