THE POET
Martha Dickinson Bianchi translation
Ne'er have I sung in idle hours of dreaming, With verse harmonious and sweet-voiced rhyme, I have sung only when in tempest raging My soul was shaken by a power sublime! For each thought I have suffered and been troubled, No dream creation painless from me torn, The blessed lot of Poet not seldom seeming A cross intolerable to be borne! Oft have I sworn to evermore keep silence, To mingle and be lost among the crowd, But when the winds once more their strings are sweeping— Aeolian harps must ever cry aloud; And in the Spring the flooding streams on-rushing Must downward plunge into the vale below, When from the rocky peaks' high towering summits The sun's warm rays have melted off the snow.