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                                   ODE

                        (In Ancient Meter)

 

                               

 

I never thought I would learn how to die, ever.

Forever young, cloaked in my mantle,

My eyes, dreamful, were affixed to the star

                                                Of solitude.
 

All of a sudden you rose across my way—

You, my suffering, so painful and sweet;

To its full I drank your voluptuous,

                                                Merciless death.

 

Wretched I burn alive tortured like Nessus,

Or like Hercules by his harness poisoned—

My fire can’t be quenched by all the sweeping

                                                Waves of the seas.

 

Woe betide, by my own dream devoured…

Consumed by flames, I wail on a pyre, my own;

Can I ever rise anew, luminous

                                                Like the Phoenix?

 

Oh, troubled eyes, from my path now vanish,

Return to my bosom, sad indifference;

So I can die in peace, my own old self

                                                To me redeem!

 

                                                                        (1883)