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?
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.
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, a Romantic lyric poet who is regarded as one of the first modern Spanish poets, was born on February 17, 1836, in Seville, Spain. He was one of eight children born to Joaquina Bastida y Vargas and the painter José Domínguez Bécquer, who adopted the Bécquer surname as an acknowledgement of his family’s Flemish ancestors. The elder Bécquer died in 1841, and his wife passed away in 1847.