You Never Knew My Soul – M. Eminescu

For me in all existence nowhere such wealth abides

As in the tender secret your gentle beauty hides;

For on what other wonder than that of your sweet charm

Would I a lifetime squander of meditation calm

On legends and on musing, and thus a language mould

That it with fleeting cadence your loveliness enfold

With chains of flowing images, and on it dreams bestow

That it ne’er till time’s ending shall to the darkness go?

Today when all my being to your being is bound,

When hid in every sorrow for me a joy is found;

When you to me more lovely than marble do appear

And in your eye is kindled a ray of starlight clear

That while I gaze upon you I feel I must go blind

With so much shining wonder that floods upon my mind;

Today when is my longing so tender and so true

As is the very charm itself that does your form endue,

And stronger is the yearning that our two hearts have known

Than light that yearns for darkness, the chisel for the stone;

When my desire is boundless, so gentle and so high

As on the earth is nowhere, and nowhere in the sky;

When everything about you for me is magic spell,

A smile, a word, a gesture, no matter ill or well;

When you are the enigma of life for me the whole,

Your words now show me plainly you never knew my soul.

translated by Corneliu M. Popescu

Alice, Carla, Carmen, Călin, Dictatura justiţiei, Ioan Usca, Mirela, Ragnar, Rokssana, Schtiel, Shayna