Page:Von Heidenstam - Sweden's laureate, selected poems of Verner von Heidenstam (1919).djvu/69

Beside him on a yellow silken cord.
Untroubled calm lay over all the place,
On Silence's forever silent land,
The land of lethargy, hushed Egypt, where
The very wave breaks voiceless on the strand.
Sleeping flamingoes lined the bank! A boat
Swam down the yellow mirror of the tide,
Its after-cabin painted green and red,
Drifting with neither oar nor sail to guide.

Old Djufar mounted on the parapet
Solemnly, like an actor much-renowned,
And mothers raised their little children up
To wait his song—but Djufar made no sound.
His eyes dilated and glowed out beneath
His forehead, which was brown as darkened leather,
And in his eagerly uplifted hand
Against the blue sky shone the pen's white feather.

He moved his lips in silence, he who oft
Had charmed forth tears and laughter from the rest
Both with his verses and his ringing voice
Now let his chin sink slowly to his breast.

He turned him from the folk and with a sleeve
Of his burnoús he covered all his head.
He burst out weeping. He let fall his pen
And back into his lowly home he fled.

Then cried the foremost maiden: "In good truth
Djufar is fated never to be stirred