MY HEART IS AS IT CLIMBED A STEEP.

My heart is as it climbed a steep,

To reach your kindness fathomlessly deep,

And there I pray to you with swimming eyes.

I came so late to where you arc,

You with your pity more than prodigal's surmise;

I came from very far

Unto the two hands you were holding out,

Calmly, to me who stumbled on in doubt!

I had in me so much tenacious rust,

That gnawed with its rapacious teeth

My confidence in myself;

I was so tired, I was so spent,

I was so old with my mistrust,

I was so tired, I was so spent

With all the roads of my discontent.

So little I deserved the joy how deep

Of seeing your feet light up my wilderness,

That I am trembling still with it, and nigh to weep,

And lowly for ever is the heart you bless.

Contemporary Belgian Poetry Selected and Translated by Jethro Bithell · 第 221 / 232 题