the deep,

carrying the lights from the east of the earth to every barren continent,

until every handful of Lebanon's soil is a mountain upon the far-off seas.

The cedars clapped, robed in glory, while Ashtarut hid herself away in secret.

What mourning is hers, what phantoms bare themselves in her wide dark eyes!

She sings of yesterday, of blossom-kisses amid the singing groves,

of Adonis, who set the river dancing with pride, its banks watered with bliss:

a countenance out of Lebanon's mountains in the morning, and a body of their unhearing stone,

the twist of his forearm a strip of sternness drowned in fresh lilies,

and the dawning of his brow, out of the anguish of secrets, come back robed in forenoon light.

He prophesies, and the rose's cheek is at play, and the storming winds hushed in listening —

a bareness that let fall proud features, the sun's rising out of clouds of dust,

a sheepskin and a quiver from which the red tremor of desire bares itself,

and the curves of a bow twisted about the forearm, come back dyed with doom.

She remembered him saying: "O my virgin garden, O my rapture among boon companions,

dawn laughs in your brow, and the plaint in your eyebrows tells of proud grace,

and night holds — with the rays in your lashes — the chill of languishing and the chill of sickness.

Are they languor and melted sorrows, or longing and the echo of weeping?

Desires pass through the air of your eyes as camel-drivers pass in the darkness,

preludes that brought forth Qays and Layla while the two were still the desert's desire.

What is in your cheeks of glimpses of paradises hidden from all but the eyes of prophets?

And your dark lip parts upon a small dream brimming over with luster?

I love you — amid the pine and the cypress — a vision in a green cloud."

She remembered him — the night sultry — drawing near, offering a forearm streaming with bounty,

and he twined his dew-cooled waist about her: the clasp of a rose in a golden hand,

and she melted between two arms — of Lebanon's rock, of the dew of the shades.

She remembered him, in his arms flowers he gathered for a pillow against evening;

and when she slept at nightfall, it was amid the flowers of the hills and the stars of the sky.

She remembered him — the tears filling her hands — in the mouth of the wild beast, red with blood,

dyed with blood, dyed with night: did he die, then, when the light died?

And he watered the river with gore, and the river became a memory of desire and a memory of misery.

Ashtarut despaired after Adonis, and made an end of the proud leap,

of the fresh young hopes, of glory wide enough to slay the sea before the trunk of the standard.

And when she passes, a curtain of darkness falls over Phoenicia — a curtain of ending.

O rocks of stupor along the River Ibrahim, forgive a voiceless tear.