l day
staring at my sovereign beauty.

But I, full of the lust
that makes furious the sea and mountains
lifted myself up strongly through the sky
lifted the diversity of my flanks and entrails...

At sunset time
drinking at the spring's edge
I drank down the secrets
of mysterious earth.

The sea and mountains, mist and cattle and yellow broom-flowers, and
fishing boats with lateen sails like dark wings against the sunrise
towards Mallorca: delight of the nose and the eyes and the ears in all
living perceptions until the poison of other-worldliness wells up
suddenly in him and he is a Christian and a mystic full of echoes of
old soul-torturing. In Maragall's most expressive work, a sequence of
poems called _El Comte Arnau_, all this is synthesized. These are from
the climax.

All the voices of the earth
acclaim count Arnold
because from the dark trial
he has come back triumphant.

"Son of the earth, son of the earth,
count Arnold,
now ask, now ask
what cannot you do?"

"Live, live, live forever,
I would never die:
to be like a wheel revolving;
to live with wine and a sword."

"Wheels roll, roll,
but they count the years."

"Then I would be a rock
immobile to suns or storms."

"Rock lives without life
forever impenetrable."

"Then the ever-moving sea
that opens a path for all things."

"The sea is alone, alone,
you go accompanied."

"Then be the air when it flames
in the light of the deathless sun."

"But air and sun are loveless,
ignorant of eternity."

"Then to be man more than man
to be earth palpitant."

"You shall be wheel and rock,
you shall be the mist-veiled sea
you shall be the air in flame,
you shall be the whirling stars,
you shall be man more than man
for you have the will for it.
You shall run the plains and hills,
all the earth that is so wide,
mounted on a horse of flame
you shall be tireless, terrible
as the tramp of the storms
All the voices of earth
will cry out whirling about you.
They will call you spirit in torment
call you forever damned."

Night. All the beauty of Adalaisa
asleep at the feet of naked Christ.
Arnold goes pacing a dark path;
there is silence among the mountains;
in front of him the rustling lisp of a river,
a poo