MT. IDA
I
I long desired to see, I now have seen.
Yonder the heavenly everlasting bride
Draws the white shadows to her virgin side,
Ida, whom long ago God made his Queen.
The daylight weakens to a fearful sheen;
The mountains slumber seaward sanctified,
And cloudy shafts of bluish vapour hide
The places where a sky and world have been.
O Ida, snowy bride that God espoused
Unto that day that never wholly is,
Whiten thou the horizon of my eyes,
That when the momentary sea aroused
Flows up in earthquake, still thou mayest rise
Sacred above the quivering Cyclades.
II
Art thou still veiled, and ne'er before my sight
At sunset, as I yearn to see thee most,
Wilt thou appear in crimson robes and lost,
Aloft the crystal vapours of the night?
Is it the rule of all things infinite
To trail across remoteness and in clouds
The glory of their sacerdotal shrouds,
And shade with evening their eternal light?
O travellers abroad the mortal plain
On weary beasts of burden overta'en
By the unspeakable hours, I say: Press on.
For tho' a little part be hardly seen,
Hope spangles out the rest, and while ye strain
Another cloud already, look, is gone.
III
As now my ship at midday passes out
Into the lonely circles of the sea,
Thou o'er thy southern island loftily
Vague in the light appearest like a thought.
Over the blazing waves my vessel caught
Continues more into infinity:
And, as adoring I look after thee,
My eyes see white and in thy place is nought.
In the decline and speed of human things
When time drags on the dreamer by the hand
Like an unwilling child and reprobate,
It is enough if on the parting sings
The certain voice he could not understand—
It is enough, it is not yet too late.
