With Homer you conversed alone for days and nights, Our waiting hours were passing slowly, And shining you came down from the mysterious heights And brought to us your tablets holy - So? in the wilderness, beneath a tent, you found Us, feasting mad in empty gaiety, Singing our savage songs and galloping around Some newly hand-created deity. We grew confused, aloof from your good rays hid we. Then, seized of wrath and desolation, Have you, O prophet, cursed your mindless family And smashed your tablets in frustration? No, you have cursed us not. From heights you disappear Into the shade of little valleys; You love the heavens' crash, but also wish to hear Bees humming over red azaleas. Such is the honest bard. With passion he laments At solemn fairs of Melpomena - To smile upon the crowd's plebeian merriments, The liberties of coarse arena. Now Rome is calling him, now majesties of Troy, Now elder Ossian's craggy gravels - And in the meantime he will hear with childish joy Of Czar Sultan's heroic travels.