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78
Konstantin Balmont

Many circlets for lily-white fingers,
For ring-bounded lives,
For ring-fettered years,
As with lips growing cold the word 'love'
We repeat.
Thou Greatest the tools and machines
That shake mountains and shatter and smite,
The tools that find deep-buried gold, the keenness of
weapons that kill.
 

5

Unto thee, omnipresent and sovereign, my dreaming I

vow.
I am even as thou.
Thou dost light, thou dost burn, thou dost strive,
Thou art 'live, thou art 'live!
Of old a winged dragon thou wert, to the altar didst
glide
Thence to ravish the bride.
And a fiery guest, a consoler who warmed to the bone
The young wife left alone.
O brilliant, O burning, O biting, O fierce,
In thy flame all the colors arise.
Thou art crimson and yellow, thy gleaming doth pierce
With the glow of chameleon gold and the scarlet that
lights autumn skies.
Thou art as a diamond with facets that shine,
As the feline caress of soft eyes that are heady as wine,
As the wave in its ecstasy breaking, an emerald line.
Like the leaf's iridescence agleam with reiterant Springs
In the dewdrop that trembles and swings.