The Secret Splendour

The Stranger*

How oft I ask myself: "Whence wandered you?

Nought chains your soul to earth with happiness:

Coldly you turn from human love's caress,

As though a rapture infinite were your due!

What memories haunt you of lost paradise?

What cause once served, celestially august,

 Makes all here seem disfigured barren dust?

 What beauty shines in your impassible eyes?"

Vainly I question the clay-built heart of time

How this remote sky-yearning reverie came....

 I hear, astonished at my own vast mood,

 In my vague tenebrous dream-solitude

The inexplicable grief of a sublime

Stranger who ever hides his country and name!

28.7.32

* After the French L'Etranger of Silly Prudhomme.

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