Poems of Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, VII
Translated from the Spanish by Mason Carnes
In the dark corner of the drawing-room,
Forgotten by its mistress long ago,
Silent, cover’d with dust there in the gloom
The old harp lies.
How many notes slept in those strings half-dead
And waited for her fingers, white as snow.
To wake them into throbbing life, that fled
Away in sighs!
Ah me! thought I, how oft sleeps genius thus
Deep in the soul, hoping eternally
A voice will say, as He to Lazarus,
“Arise and walk.”—Ah me!
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.