Page:Darío - Eleven Poems.djvu/35

All longing and all ardor, the mere sense
And natural vigor; and without a sign
Of stage effect or literature's pretence—
If there is ever a soul sincere—'tis mine.

The ivory tower awakened my desire;
I longed to enclose myself in selfish bliss,
Yet hungered after space, my thirst on fire
For heaven, from out the shades of my abyss.

As with the sponge the salt sea saturates
Below the oozing wave, so was my heart,—
Tender and soft,—bedrenched with bitter fates
That world and flesh and devil here impart.

But through the grace of God my conscience
Elected unto good its better part;
If there were hardness left in any sense
It melted soft beneath the touch of Art.

My intellect was freed from baser thought,
My soul was bathed in the Castalian flood,
My heart a pilgrim went, and so I caught
The harmony from out the sacred wood.

Oh, sacred wood! oh, rumor, that profound
Stirs from the sacred woodland's heart divine!
Oh, plenteous fountain in whose power is wound
And overcome our destiny malign!

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