Page:Von Heidenstam - Sweden's laureate, selected poems of Verner von Heidenstam (1919).djvu/134

Mild, Elysian
Voices, in vain would you soothe my soul.
Threatful, with numberless
Repetition,
Scenes of Hades before me roll.

Lethe's tide makes the soul forget;
I, blind and headlong-hearted,
Drank of dark Styx—and my gaze was set
Only on times departed.
Pale ghosts, grieving me,
Lure me ever
Only to dream by Charon's flood.
Gay Life, deceiving me,
Grants me never
Fruits that, beckoning, thrill my blood.

Fettered to life, I roam the earth.
Driven without cessation,
Seeking, but finding only dearth,
Stranger in every nation.
Hades recaptured me.
Life has punished
All of the wraith-kind who came her way.
Beauty enraptured me,
Realms long vanished
Won my soul to be theirs for aye.