Page:Darío - Eleven Poems.djvu/33

Within my garden stood a statue fair,
Of marble seeming, yet of flesh and bone;
A gentle spirit was incarnate there
Of sensitive and sentimental tone.

So timid of the world, it fain would hide
And from its walls of silence issue not,
Save when the Spring released upon its tide
The hour of melody it had begot—

The hour of sunset and of hidden kiss;
The hour of gloaming twilight and retreat;
The hour of madrigal, the hour of bliss,
Of "I adore thee" and "Alas" too sweet.

And 'mid the gamut of the flute, perchance,
Would come a ripple of crystal mysteries,
Recalling Pan and his glad Grecian dance
With the intoning of old Latin keys,

With such a sweep, and ardor so intense,
That on the statue suddenly were born
The muscled goat-thighs shaggy and immense,
And on the brow the satyr's pair of horn.

As Gongora's Galatea, so in fine
The fair marquise of Verlaine captured me;
And so unto the passion half divine
Was joined a human sensuality;

15]