Spirit with
speckled breast,
Come, follow
me
Through
thickets, up scree,
To a
nest
In a cluster
of rowan berries,
Where my brown
throat
Shall sing
what you taught me.
There I shall
dance to the nymphs' down-derries,
Where
Phrynichus once, like a bee,
Knelt, sucking
nectar out of your melodies.
So shall the
swans cry
To the
River-king
With
clamouring wings
And fly
Low over
endless marshes.
The sound in a
wave
Flows up to
heaven.
Winds cease
for the cattle to listen,
And the
hounds' fur stands on end,
While spirits
stumble in breathless astonishment.
Tr. Leo Aylen (first published 1999). There must be hundreds of translations of this passage; this one creates its own music. Aylen is (was?) an impressively multi-talented man.
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