Water Nymph Poem by Peter Mamara

by M. Eminescu (1850-1889)

(Fantasy)

At the smiling row of day's hours
Line up the dark and quiet ones,
Which carry mysteries of love in their heart,
And are pale, sublime and quiet.
And through the clouds,
On wings of thrills,
The night, touches the earth lightly
With it's reflection.

A young man races against the speed of thought.
He rides a horse that exhales fire through its nostrils.
He rides through a grim and cold haze.
While in the wind, he keeps his head lowered.
And his mad horse hastens non-stop
Driven by the fairy-of-fright
— The old might.

The castle comes into view with its discoloured looks
— Over the flanks of mountains, over the rocky peaks.
Its dark and high roof is getting old
— Because of clouds and years.
But today it is lively.
And sounds of a song
Of fine quality,
Reverberates
— Through its huge Venetian blinds.

The widows are lit with thousands of lights,
Through which can be seen how quickly pass
Light shadows, which dance
— On sublime lyrics of a bard's song.
Sweet dreams of love,
How easily they dance.
The palace looked enchanted
— With gold.

His horse jumps over deep gorges,
In its bold and huge leap,
Like a stag which jumps over cliff-tops,
Being followed by a burning arrow,
With its nostrils red
With its mane in the wind…
Once more he spurs his horse
And he arrives of course.

And the young man dismounts his horse.
He carries a mandolin under his coat.
His heart is full of sincere love.
His mind is full of dreams.
My gentleman hastens trough an iron grille
Searching the window
And he waits.

The white beings fly dancing
Like white thoughts in the early hours.
The fragrant and gentle souls look like
Are being carried by a gentle breeze from the gardens.
Nymphs sing in choirs at dances.
Like ghosts — sad and pale hidden thoughts
About running away — sigh with loud sounds,
Being accompanied by gentle lyres,
Then, they tuned the fiddles
And they slowly played keenly and clearly,
Tunes from the past, which cheer up
The cloudy mind full of thoughts:

"Carried by the wind, on the river of desire,
Once upon a time, came a tall and slender king,
On a boat with oars dipped in song
— To look for one of his sisters.
The heroes take heed, and women are crying,
For, they are in love with the king.

He appropriates new echoes from the mountains.
The song full of desire makes off with the word of love
— From the lips of the naïve Venus.

He wanted to find a white maiden
— His twin sister —
On mountains clouded by fog,
On mountain peaks of quartz,
And he found you.

You are twin sister with the songs
— And their spirit.
The king of your heart
Must be similar to you,
How dream and desire are.

In you can be seen
That there is a God in Heaven,
Who, carries in His thought
— The symmetry and heaven's mysteries.

So, push the strings gently,
One into the other,
For, the slender king couldn't find anything
— Akin to the inside of your heart.
Sing with the sadness brought about by troubles
When people cry for love,
So the people and the stars might believe
It is their skill.

How the angels fly from star to star,
So the bards take wing, and enliven their fine art.
The bards raise their manly voices
— Throughout the length of a variety of dances.
It seems that the harps fall to pieces from playing so many songs,
When singers sigh with their soul, or sing songs, which scare.
The music of the spheres is the music that the Seraphs adore.
The hearts of the people, who are gathered around,
And say happy songs aloud,
So they can inspire skill to the stars.
How the white-sun light is
Made up from blended colours,
So this mythical sweet song
Flows from reverberating voices.

Water sprite
With eye of sweet light,
With hair, which wraps in gold locks
And is a treasure.

Idea you,
Lost in a gentle enchantment
From Genesis' blueprint
That didn't turn out quite right.

You want to revitalize the people, who are alive,
And the stone, which ages laugh at,
And all there is in nature, and has no feeling?

Then come,
For, your eye is verve and fire,
And your heart is a gentle enchantment
Which brings anything back to life.

I shall chant
What the earlier centuries kept quiet.
And the high mountaintops
Shall rise a bit more.

And from the amalgamation of white dreams,
From the middle of the dancing white beings,
Like the song between the sighs,
The queen-of-the-queens-of-the-night appears.
Her face is bordered by golden-hair.
A wreath sneaks over her curls.
Her small hand mingles lively the strings,
Of a gentle and silvery lyre,
And as from my poetic early days
The miracle of the ideal had surfaced.
So through the notes of the love's lyre,
Her voice sounds pure and tender.

A lyre, broken on a stone that is named people,
Exhausted heart dipped in a cloud,
Bitter cry, which was made fun of,
And the charming truth, which is my shivering body,
Which, fades in time without end,
Like a thunderbolt without a target
— Like a head without the best part.

And from pains that overpower me,
I slurp the clear myrrh
How a swan bends
Drinking from the frozen lake.

And I've changed my life's thought
— With an unfathomable demise.
I was an eagle on a rock,
I am a cross on a grave.

I ask my heart of stone,
What is my life's aim?
My eye lacks clarity.
My lips got blue due to pain.

To me, the cross seems thoughtful.
Seems that it burns my life's spool.
And through mourning haze,
I look at my dead face.

But when white goddesses
Shall look into my heart,
Oh, think of me, and think that
I've been on this world.

A charmed murmur gently caresses
— The hall's intense silence.
A vibrating mandolin is heard
—Through a pompously built window-arch.
And a soft echo
Thirsty of love
Drowns in the mandolin's strings
— The crazy things.

And everything that he picked up in his life,
From waves, from the mountain, from valleys,
All his young soul, his entire beloved rebel stance,
He looses it in his strings.
He empties his heart with sadness
He cries with a smile.
He sings pain with honeyed lips.

"Why am I not a dried flower in the wind?
And pale like a head, which is about to die,
Which looses its compassion amid crosses of graves
With overwhelming smell, and no blessing,
And only then you would take me,
And you would look at me thoughtfully,
Likening me to a short-lived flower.

But I am only one love, my babe,
Which burns in a young heart,
A voice from my lips, fired by desire,
An empty and mad mind,
A sweet enchantment on silver strings,
When my feeble madness comes back to life.

But I have a field, which undulate with flowers,
It is the field of my hopes.
There wait for you: smiling daybreaks,
Weaving for you a crown with stars.
Come, water nymph you,
And bring through your love
— The thrill of life.
Come to hopes-field."

(1869)

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