JOSÉ ALBANO
(1882-1923)
See also: POEMS IN PORTUGUESE
4 SONNETS
WITH PORTUGUESE PROSE-TRANSLATION
AUGUSTfSSIMAE ET SERENISSIMAE
REGINAE
CORDIS MEI
DÉDICO,
ÏOSEPHUS ALBANUS
I
The hour, the day, the year when i was born
Into this world of misery and pain,
A thousand times, although it be in vain,
1 do lament with anguish night and morn.
Opress'd and burden'd, feeble and forlorn,
In arms against misfortune 1 would fain
Be merry, but if others do attain
To happiness, 1 only weep and mourn.
Ye who have seen my tears and heard my sighs,
Ye who have sorrows infinite to bear,
Fire in the heart and water in the eyes;
Ye who are sad, your woes to mine compare —
And all the grief that in your bosom lies,
Will never equal half of my despair.
II
How sweet it is after the strife of day
To rest profundly in the arms of night,
Forgetting sorrow, dreaming of delight
That dwelleth in the heavens, far away.
The winged thoughts leave this dark earth and stray
I'the sky above the stars so pure and bright,
Trying to filch one ray of golden light
Which strangely glimmers on the Milky Way.
But Time, full of fierce wrath and cruelty,
Doth hurry on each hour that comes and goes,
And swiftly do our happy moments flee.
Night fades away and with it ends repose —
And rising morning brings relentlessly
Death to my dreams and life to all my woes.
III
When I look back on days that are no more
And think of hopes and dreams that now are dead,
To my sad soul, with sorrow surfeited,
Fain would 1 that past happiness restore.
And whilst the cruel Fates I do implore,
Tears sweet and bitter from these eye-lids red
Rush like swift rivers in a narrow bed
Or like tempestuous waves upon the shore.
Oh memory, why dost thou make me sigh
For what once gave me joy, but now gives pain,
Those fancies and illusions born to die?
My former state 1 can no more regain
And if 1 dreamt and hoped in times gone by,
Ne'er will 1 dream, alas! or hope again.
IV
Methought, when bitter Sorrow came to me:
One day it will be gone and 1 shall rest,
One day I who am grievously opprest,
Shall be delivered from my misery.
And then, perchance, when all these dark days flee,
Sweet Joy will come and dwell within my breast,
And my sad soul no longer shall protest
'Gainst Fate, but will exult in being free.
And as the weary, melancholy hours,
Full of strange longing, silently passed by,
No hope to earth from heaven would descend.
And when I saw that in this life of ours
Pleasure had no beginning, 1 did sigh,
For then I knew that Sorrow had no end.
ANNO DOMINI 1912.
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