“Get up, Riccangela, come away.”

She arose.  She gazed once more with terrible intensity upon the little livid face of the dead.  Once again she called with all the power of her voice, “My son!  My son!  My son!”

Then with her own hands she covered up with the sheet the unheeding remains.

And the women gathered around her, drew her a little to one side, under shadow of a bowlder; they forced her to sit down, they lamented with her.

Little by little the spectators melted away.  There remained only a few of the women comforters; there remained the man clad in linen, the impassive custodian, who was awaiting the inquest.

The dog-day sun poured down upon the strand, and lent to the funeral sheet a dazzling whiteness.  Amidst the heat the promontory raised its desolate aridity straight upward from the tortuous chain of rocks.  The sea, immense and green, pursued its constant, even breathing.  And it seemed as if the languid hour was destined never to come to an end.

Under shadow of the bowlder, opposite the white sheet, which was raised up by the rigid form of the corpse beneath, the mother continued her monody in the rhythm rendered sacred by all the sorrows, past and present, of her race.  And it seemed as if her lamentation was destined never to come to an end.

          TO AN IMPROMPTU OF CHOPIN

     When thou upon my breast art sleeping,
       I hear across the midnight gray—­
     I hear the muffled note of weeping,
       So near—­so sad—­so far away!

     All night I hear the teardrops falling—­
       Each drop by drop—­my heart must weep;
     I hear the falling blood-drops—­lonely,
       Whilst thou dost sleep—­whilst thou dost sleep.

From ‘The Triumph of Death.’

          INDIA

     India—­whose enameled page unrolled
       Like autumn’s gilded pageant, ’neath a sun
       That withers not for ancient kings undone
     Or gods decaying in their shrines of gold—­

     Where were thy vaunted princes, that of old
       Trod thee with thunder—­of thy saints was none
       To rouse thee when the onslaught was begun,
     That shook the tinseled sceptre from thy hold?

     Dead—­though behind thy gloomy citadels
       The fountains lave their baths of porphyry;
     Dead—­though the rose-trees of thy myriad dells
       Breathe as of old their speechless ecstasy;
     Dead—­though within thy temples, courts, and cells,
       Their countless lamps still supplicate for thee.

Translated by Thomas Walsh, for ‘A Library of the World’s Best Literature.’

ANTAR

(About 550-615)

BY EDWARD S. HOLDEN