"You stranger knocking at the gate,
Whence do you come
And who are you? -
You stranger to this world of ours,
Answer and say,
Whence can you be?
Through what worlds did you live the nightmare
of stories untold hitherto,
From what star, tell us, did you borrow
the hue of pale insanity? -"
"Whence do I come ? -
Where can I come from when my eyes
Full of regrets and burning grief
Are like two votive candles lit
to the dead poets in their crypt?
My sandals are worn out, behold!
The toga that Apollo gave me
The night I set out towards you
Can hardly flutter now its blue
over my shoulders bare and cold."
"I'm bare -
For long has been my journey,
And on my way, along the road,
I met all those who tried to sell you
New gems which can't and won't be sold,
Who tried to sing you new romances,
To guide you to a higher thing,
That beauty one can only guess
In the eternal harmonies
Between an end
And endlessness -
Those who have brought for you the light,
Those whom you have received with hatred,
Whom you hae stoned away
With stones
That will become their pedestals
The moment the inebriation of new ideals carries you! -"
"Where do I come from?
Oh, the world that lies beyond the known horizon,
A world that has been never trodden by any one of you,
I come
From where the sky is not your blue,
The trees are not this green of yours,
From where the Nymphs await the coming on the lawns
Of naked Fawns,
The world of goblets always empty
Yet brimful all at any time,
The world of the last song sublime
Borne on the wings of snow-white storks
From shore to shore,
From land to land,
From man to man,
From mouth to mouth,
The far-off land of the four winds
From east and west and north and south! -"
"Open the gate, then,
And come forth
To welcome me with laurel leaves,
And you who measure in your verse immeasurable thoughts,
Oh come,
Gather round me
And to the strains
Of golden lyres march forth with me
Towards the world where there will be
No feudal moats, no drawbridge castles,
No rusty copper gates at which
Newcomers knock,
Come all of you while there isi time
And while you can still sing,
Oh come! - "
"Come, let me kindle in your hearts
the flame of long extinguished torches
And in your verse the fantasy
And charm of art's new wizardry!
And let me crown your songs whereby
Today you beg a humble dole
With the resplendent brilliancy of your tomorrow's aureole!"
But at the voice of future art, deaf and shut fast remained the gate...
It was, if I remember well, about the year nineteen-o-eight.
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