CUERVO - Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

232 DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND LYRICS
And within me, my heart to bear witness
What was and shall be !
Oh heaven, and the t errible crystal!
No rampart excludes
Your eye from the life to be lived
In the blue solitudes!
Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement!
Still moving with you-
For, ever some new head and breast of them
Thrusts into view
To observe the intruder-you see it
If quickly you turn
And, before they escape you, surprise them­
They grudge you should learn
How the soft plains they look on, lean over,
And love (they pretend)
-Cower beneath them; the flat sea-pine crouches,
The wild fruit-trees bend,
E'en the myrtle-leaves curl, shrink and shut­
All is silent and grave-
' Tis a sensual and timorous beauty­
How fair, but a slave!
So, I turned to the sea,-and there slumbered
As greenly as ever
Those isles of the siren, your Galli ;
No ages can sever
The Three, nor enable their sister
To join them,-half way
On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses­
No farther to-day;
Tho' the small one, just launched in the wave,
Watches breast-high and steady
From under the rock, her bold sister
Swum half-way already.
Fortu, shall we sail there together
And see from the sides
,
Quite new rocks show their faces-new haunts
Where the siren abides?
Shall we sail round and round them, close over
The rocks, tho' unseen,
That ruffle the gray glassy water
To glorious green?
Then scramble from splinter to splinter,
Reach land and explore,
On the largest, the strange square blacl· turret
With never a door,
Just a loop to admit the quick lizards;
Then, stand there and hear
The birds' 4!luiet singing, that tells us
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