NIGHTFALL IN THE TROPICS
by: Rubén Darío
(1867-1916)
- HERE is twilight grey and gloomy
- Where the sea its velvet trails;
- Out across the heavens roomy
- Draw the veils.
-
- Bitter and sonorous rises
- The complaint from out the deeps,
- And the wave the wind surprises
- Weeps.
-
- Viols there amid the gloaming
- Hail the sun that dies,
- And the white spray in its foaming
- "Miserere" sighs.
-
- Harmony the heavens embraces,
- And the breeze is lifting free
- To the chanting of the races
- Of the sea.
-
- Clarions of horizons calling
- Strike a symphony most rare,
- As if mountain voices calling
- Vibrate there.
-
- As though dread, unseen, were waking,
- As though awesome echoes bore
- On the distant breeze's quaking
- The lion's roar.
--Translated by Thomas Walsh
"Nightfall in the Tropics"
is reprinted from Hispanic Anthology: Poems Translated from
the Spanish by English and North American Poets. Ed. Thomas
Walsh. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1920. |
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