The Sweetest Confidence

Halt with us, O ship, beside the dwelling-places,
then drop anchor at Jupiter;
we will flood the horizons with longing and yearning
like the scattered rays of the polestar,
and let our gaze rove over those traces
and over a face that bewitches whoever seeks it,
standing before the eye like the comely full moon,
kindling the heart with an immortal love,
joining radiance with sweetness of voice,
sending light into the heart of the heedless.

Do you see, my friend, a lover like me,
dazed of mind, so drawn toward his desires?
Or do you see a heart like mine, fluttering
at a fragrance, a wing, or a gleam?
There is no exaggeration in my words, nothing wide of the truth:
my beloved is king over all creation.
When the breezes of the east wind rise,
jostling one another upon the breast of the firmament,
I fancied them dictating letters to us
from a beloved, openhanded, inclining near.

The sweetest confidence is talk in which
looks of gentleness are mingled with reproach.
What pledge — would that I knew! — did my soul
make to sorrow, not knowing the reason?
O fault-finder, let me be: in what
you see of my sins there is no crime.
Let it suffice you that I am your faithful friend;
no lover has outdone me in loving you.
My sin, in its hidden meaning, is only
that I thought well of base hypocrisy.

God keep those brief hours of serenity,
the day we sought the manifest truth —
glimpses it is not mine to describe,
all of them telling of the secret lying hidden.
Had we known what we would meet after them
of weariness, throbbing, and torment,
we would have done without appearing there,
and rested from the going out and the coming back,
and contented ourselves with hopes alone,
and spared ourselves the hearing of idle talk.