I Gave You Immortality

I gave you immortality and what did you give me? Only
the sharp arrows of your beauty, a harsh onset and piercing
sorrow, bitterness of spirit and a sore gleam of glory.

If I gave you immortality you gave it to me; you put an edge
on my spirit and radiance in my song. And though you spoiled
my understanding of the conflict, yet, were I to see you again,
I should accept more and the whole of it.

Were I, after oblivion of my trouble, to see before me on
the plain of the land of youth the gracious form of your
beauty, I should prefer it there, although my weakness would
return, and to peace of spirit again to be wounded.

O yellow-haired, lovely girl, you tore my strength and inclined
my course from its aim: but, if I reach my place, the
high wood of the men of song, you are the fire of my lyric
you made a poet of me through sorrow.

I raised this pillar on the shifting mountain of time, but it
is a memorial-stone that will be heeded till the Deluge, and,
though you will be married to another and ignorant of my
struggle, your glory is my poetry, after the slow rotting of
your beauty.