A pompous ragged minstrel
sings beside our dining-table
a very old romantic song:

_I love the sound of the hunting-horns
deep in the woods at night._

A wind makes dance the fine acacia leaves
and flutters the cloths of the tables.
The kites tremble and soar.
The voice throbs sugared into croaking base
broken with the burden of the too ancient songs.

And yet, beyond the flaring sky,
beyond the soaring kites,
where are no voices of singers,
no strummings of guitars,
the untarnished songs
hang like great moths just broken
through the dun threads of their cocoons,
moist, motionless, limp
as flowers on the inaccessible twigs
of the yewtree, Ygdrasil,
the untarnished songs.

Will you put your hand in mine
pompous street-singer,
and start on a quest with me?
For men have cut down the woods where the laurel grew
to build streets of frame houses,
they have dug in the hills after iron
and frightened the troll-king away;
at night in the woods no hunter puffs out his cheeks
to call to the kill on the hunting-horn.

Now when the kites flaunt bravely
their tissue-paper glory in the sunset
we will walk together down the darkening streets
beyond these tables and the sunset.

We will hear the singing of drunken men
and the songs whores sing
in their doorways at night
and the endless soft crooning
of all the mothers,
and what words the young men hum
when they walk beside the river
their arms hot with caresses,
their cheeks pressed against their girls' cheeks.

We will lean very close
to the quiet lips of the dead
and feel in our worn-out flesh perhaps
a flutter of wings as they soar from us
the untarnished songs.

But the minstrel sings as the pennies clink:
_I love the sound of the hunting-horns
deep in the woods at night._

O who will go on a quest with me
beyond all wide seas
all mountain passes
and climb at last with me
among the imperishable branches
of the yewtree, Ygdrasil,
so that all the limp unuttered songs
shall spread their great moth-wings and soar
above the craning necks of the chimneys
above the tissue-paper kites and the sunset
above the diners and their dining-tables,
beat upward with strong wing-beats steadily
till they can drink the q