The ferryman - Emile Verhaeren

The ferryman, a green reed 'twixt his teeth,

With hand on oar, against the current strong

Had rowed and rowed so long.

But she, alas! whose voice was hailing him

Across the far waves dim.

Still further o'er the far waves seemed to float,

Still further backwards, 'mid the mists, remote.

The casements with their eyes.

The dial-faces of the towers that rise

Upon the shore,

Watched, as he strove and laboured more and more.

With frantic bending of the back in two,

And start of savage muscles strained anew.

One oar was suddenly riven,

And by the current driven,

With lash of heavy breakers, out to sea.

But she, whose voice that hailed him he could hear

There 'mid the mist and wind, she seemed to wring

Her hands with gestures yet more maddening

Toward him who drew not near.

The ferryman with his surviving oar

Fell harder yet to work, and more and more

He strove, till every joint did crack and start,

And fevered terror shook his very heart.

The rudder broke

Beneath one sharp, rude stroke;

That, too, the current drove relentlessly,

A dreary shred of wreckage, out to sea.

The casements by the pier,

Like eyes immense and feverish open wide,

The dials of the towers—those widows drear

Upstanding straight from mile to mile beside

The banks of rivers—obstinately gaze

Upon this madman, in his headstrong craze

Prolonging his mad voyage 'gainst the tide.

But she, who yonder in the mist-clouds hailed

Him still so desperately, she wailed and wailed,

With head outstretched in fearful, straining haste

Toward the unknown of the outstretched waste.

Steady as one that had in bronze been cast,

Amid the blenched, grey tempest and the blast.

The ferryman his single oar yet plied.

And, spite of all, still lashed and bit the tide.

His old eyes, with hallucinated gaze,

Saw that far distance—an illumined haze—

Whence the voice sounded, coming toward him still.

Beneath the cold skies, lamentable, shrill.

The last oar broke—

And this the current hurried at one stroke,

Like a frail straw, towards the distant sea.

The ferryman, with arms dropped helplessly

Sank on his bench, forlorn.

His loins with vain efforts broken, torn.

Drifting, his barque struck somewhere, as by chance,

He turned a glance

Towards the bank behind him then—and saw

He had not left the shore.

The casements and the dials, one by one.

Their huge eyes gazing in a foolish stare.

Witnessed the ruin of his ardour there;

But still the old, tenacious ferryman

Firm in his teeth—for God knows when, indeed—

Held the green reed.

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Emile Verhaeren (1855 - 1916) Belgium

Translated by Alma Strettell

Source: Poems of Emile Verhaeren selected and rendered into English by Alma Strettell, The Bodley Head, 1915 (on Project Gutenberg)