Song of Autumn in the Springtime

YOUTH, treasure only gods may keep,
Fleeting from me forever now!
I cannot, when I wish to, weep,
And often cry I know not how. . . .

My heart's celestial histories,
So countless were, could not be told.—
She was a tender child, in this
World of affliction manifold.

She seemed a dawn of pure delight;
She smiled as the flow'rs after rain;
Her tresses were like to the night
Fashioned of darknesses and pain.

I was timid and childlike shy.
It could not but have been this way:
She, to my love chaste as the sky,
Was Herodias and Salomé. . . .

Youth, treasure only gods may keep,
Fleeting from me forever now!
I cannot, when I wish to, weep,
And often cry I know not how. . . .

The other was more sensitive,
More quieting and loving-kind,
With greater will to love and live
Than I ever had hoped to find.

For with her grace of tenderness
A violence of love she had:
In a peplos of loveliness
Was hid a Mænad passion mad. . . .

To her bosom she took my dream,
Fondled it there, and gave it death. . . .
My dream a suckling child did seem.
Dead lacking light, dead lacking faith. . . .

Youth, treasure only gods may keep,
Wilted in me forever now!
I cannot, when I wish to, weep,
And often cry I know not how. . . .

Another fancied my lips were
A casket wrought to hold her love;
And wildly with the teeth of her
To gnaw my very heart she strove.

She willed all passionate excess;
She was a flame of love for me;
She made each ardorous caress
Synthesis of eternity.

She deemed our flesh a deathless thing,
And on desire an Eden reared,
Forgetting that the flow'rs of Spring
And of the flesh so soon are seared. . . .

Youth, treasure only gods may keep,
Fleeting from me forever now!
I cannot, when I wish to, weep,
And often cry I know not how. . . .

And the others! in many climes,
In so many lands, ever were
Merely the pretext for my rhymes,
Or heart-born fantasies of her.

I sought for the princess in vain,
She that awaited sorrowing.
But life is hard. Bitter with pain.
There is no princess now to sing!

And yet despite the season drear,
My thirst of love no slaking knows;
Gray-haired am I, yet still draw near
The roses of the garden-close. . . .

Youth, treasure only gods may keep,
Fleeting from me forever now!
I cannot, when I wish to, weep,
And often cry I know not how. . . .

Ah, but the golden Dawn is mine!