On the Road Between Damascus and Homs — The Little Cloud!

How long will you frolic, little cloud, across the reaches of the sky,
going wherever you please in its wide horizon,
heedless of your companions far away from you?
Did you lose the way and wander,
or did the storm grow angry with you and drive you off?
Are you happy, little cloud, or sad?
I fancy you, with the sky's blue mingled into your whiteness,
like a shoot of ambition in my heart, watered by hope and tended by the days!

***

Here are the little vines
the peasant planted at equal distances,
stretching their roots through the earth, longing to join one another.
Will the sons of my country unite in love
and in honest work stripped of every personal aim,
as the roots of the vine unite, O little cloud?
And here are its buds and its young leaves —
into which the gods of spring have not yet breathed their vitality and strength —
laughing at a little swallow
that has spread its weak wings upon the air,
making toward you, thinking that with you
it will draw from the lights of the sun
truth and goodness and love to fill its small heart!
But how vain for the wings of birds,
or the desires of man,
to reach the lofty goals, or to reach you,
unless firm foundations of true principles sustain them.

O little cloud, far away in your heights
and near to me in my thoughts and my musings!!

***

The lands are broad and spacious,
and the flocks here and there graze and gambol,
picking out from among the many stones
green grass to eat.
Does the working man understand —
he on whom God has bestowed a sound mind
and full bodily powers —
that bread is eaten only by the sweat of the brow,
and that life inscribes in its volumes none but the names of those who work?

***

O little cloud, high in your tower,
you are like the shoot of ambition in my heart;
only color divides you:
you are white and it is green!!