TRANSLATIONS

THE CENTAUR.

(Englisht from Maurice de Guérin. )

WITHIN these mountain-caverns I was born,

And, like this valley's river, whose first drops
Fall from some rock that weeps within deep grot

Fell the first moment of my new-made life

Into the dark of a remote abode,

Leaving its silentness untroubled still.

When comes our mother's hour of travailing,
Towards the far caverns they retreat, and there,
In wildest depths, where shadows thickest be,
Bring forth, without a cry or murmuring,
Fruit, silent as themselves. Their milk of might
Doth feed us so that, with no languishing,

Nor wrestling in a doubtful fight, we pass

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Life's first hard struggles; yet, less soon we go

Forth from our caves than from your cradles ye

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Because we hold that it behoveth best

To keep intact and folden close and calm

The earliest seasons of existence,- days

Fill'd by the gods.

My growth had almost all

Its course within these shades where I was born.
The depth of my abode was sunk so far
Within the mountain's breast, that I had been
In ignorance of its outlet, but that winds,
Which swerv'd against the opening, flung therein
Their sudden troubles and their freshnesses.
And sometimes would my mother enter, wrapt
In valley-smells, or dripping from the waves;
And those returns of hers, albeit she taught
Me not of stream or vale, but only was
Close-follow'd of their emanations, brought
Disquiet to my life, and, passionate,

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I rov'd among the shadows. 'What is it,
This outside, where my mother is self-borne
Away? What reigneth there of mystic might,
That calleth her so often to itself?

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And what strange opposites that make her come

Thence every day emotion'd diversely?'

For she would come to me, now quick with joy,

Now sad and trailing like a wounded life.
I knew far-off that keen delight she brought

*

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By 'outside' I have translated de Guérin's 'ces dehors,' of which Georges Sand says: Cette expression est étrange, peu grammaticale, peut-étre; mais je n'en vois pas de plus belle, et de plus saisissante pour rendre le sentiment mystérieux d'un monde inconnu.'

By certain tokens in her step; 'twas shed
From every look: I felt therefrom great thrills
Of sympathy in all my breast. But most
Her deep depressions mov'd me, leading me

On, on, to guess towards what my spirit yearn'd.

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:

There wrought a great disquietude in me ;
I felt indeed and knew a force that might
Not lonely dwell and me betaking, now
To shake mine arms, and now to gallop wild
In the cave's spacious shadows, I essay'd
To find, in the blows I struck on emptiness,

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Towards what my arms should stretch, towards what my

Around the centaur's bust, the hero's frame,

The oak-tree's trunk :-My hands have tried the rocks, 55

The waters, and the innumerable plants,

And the most subtle impressions of the air :

Oft in the blind, calm night I lift mine arms

To augur of my way—

Melampus, see,

How worn my feet! and, nathless, though I am
Frore in the great extremity of age,

Come days when, in full light, upon the heights
I feel the self-same agitations come

That came in youth, and with the same impulse,

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I toss mine arms, and use all left to me

Of that youth's swiftness.

Alternations came

Upon these troublings, of long quietude
From every restless movement. At such times
My being held no other sense than that

Of growth and all the gradual life that rose
Within my bosom ; lost were all the beats
Of passion, and, in absolute repose,

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Unchanging drank I of the boon the gods

Shed through my being. O'er the secret charm

Of mere life-consciousness reign calms and shades.
O shades that in these mountain caverns dwell,

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I owe that teaching to your silent care,
That hidden teaching which sustain'd me well :
And life I drank beneath your guardianship,

Pure from the very bosom of the gods!
And when I left your shelter for the light
Of day, I stagger'd and I hailed it not
Because it seiz'd on me with violence,
Making me ebriate, as some fateful draught
Pour'd suddenly into my breast, had done.
And my whole being, till that moment's birth,
So simple and so calm, was shaken and lost
Much of itself, as scattered in the wind.

Melampus, who would'st know of the centaurs' life,
How did the gods' will guide thee unto me,

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The oldest and the saddest of them all?

Long time it is since I have liv'd their life;
No more I leave this mountain-top, where age
Keeps me a prisoner; now mine arrow-points
But only serve to loose for me the plants
Of clinging fibre :-now the quiet lakes
Know me the rivers have forgotten me.

Now will I tell thee something of my youth,—
But woe is me! for such remembrances
From drained memory falling, trickle slow
Like drops of a libation scant that fall
From a poor, broken urn.

'Twas easy task

To tell of my first years, because they were
Perfect and calm: life only, simply life

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It was that fed me; that is well retain'd

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And with no trouble told. A god, besought

To tell his life, would tell it in two words.

Full of unresting motion was my life;

My footsteps knew no limit : in prideful strength

I wander'd, stretching out in these wild wastes,

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On every side. One day, a vale unlov'd
Of centaurs did I follow, and I spied

A man, who walkt along the river's bank
At the off side: the first whom I had seen,

And I despis'd him, "for behold," I said,

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