Poems of Gustavo Adolfo Becquer LXXII

Translated from the Spanish by Mason Carnes

Is it true that from its prison
    In swift flight our spirit slips,
When sweet sleep our drooping eyelids
    With his rosy fingers tips?

Is it true our soul at midnight,
    Borne on wings of breezes fleet,
Mounts into the spaceless ether,
    There with other souls to meet?

Is it true our naked spirit,
    With no earthly fetters fraught,
For a while goes freely roaming
    In the silent world of thought?

That it keeps the stain of passions––
    Joys that bloom and woes that blight––
Like the track left in the heavens
    By a meteor in flight?

Credit

From Poems of Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1891) by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer. Translated from the Spanish by Mason Carnes. This poem is in the public domain.