Classic Poem

Hail to you, green hymn, that in superb
and starry rhymes exalt your glorious
divinity and stir the soul to song!

On the rigidly prolific peak
of your elegant and plumy spire
a garrulous blackbird sobs his welladay.

And I spread Parnassian wing and toss
it on the wild wind of the rugged Cofre,
and salute you with barbaric measure.

In guise of foliage, bifid tipped, you crook
your prongs, menacing, as from the tails
of some unheard of breed of savage snakes.

And if the flames of rancour hem about
my heart and lute, the music is rebuke
and the verse a claw imbrued with blood.

What outlandishness in your fresh fronds!
The garlands that you lift up to the clouds
are a lode before the eyes, a spell upon them.

I too am alien, and more of cynosure
with the fame I vaunt, the insults I expunge,
and from a loftier estate I fall.

You swoon enfolded in miraculous light
and a trembling iridescence of tears
diamonds and impearls your diadems.

I burn in an oestrus of love, no dew
like it that lies upon the anguishes
I send to God and that my angel heals.

Engraved in you in you my name is mingled!
It may be in your keeping it will not perish!
Through you alone it can endure and grow!