as if the tempest thirsted for the rain

No poem for yesterday because I have been having too much fun?! WE'VE BEEN BUSY. Since arriving in New York, we have seen four shows, been to the Met and the Bronx Zoo, and seen many friends, and I am very tired and may need a vacation from my vacation. Tonight is the first night of Passover, though, so here is a poem that is just a little bit for that.

Night, and the heavens beam serene with peace,
Like a pure heart benignly smiles the moon.
Oh, guard thy blessed beauty from mischance,
This I beseech thee in all tender love.
See where the Storm his cloudy mantle spreads,
An ashy curtain covereth the moon.
As if the tempest thirsted for the rain,
The clouds he presses, till they burst in streams.
Heaven wears a dusky raiment, and the moon
Appeareth dead—her tomb is yonder cloud,
And weeping shades come after, like the people
Who mourn with tearful grief a noble queen.
But look! the thunder pierced night’s close-linked mail,
His keen-tipped lance of lightning brandishing;
He lovers like a seraph-conqueror.—
Dazed by the flaming splendor of his wings,
In rapid flight as in a whirling dance,
The black cloud-ravens hurry scared away.
So, though the powers of darkness chain my soul,
My heart, a hero, chafes and breaks its bonds.

—Solomon ibn Gabirol (c. 1022 to 1058-70), "Night-Piece," translated from Hebrew by Emma Lazarus (1849-1887). The Academy of American Poets dates this poem to 1889, which is obviously posthumous for both Lazarus and ibn Gabirol, but it was published in The Poems of Emma Lazarus in Two Volumes, Vol. II Jewish Poems: Translations (Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1889). I read it for the first time when it was in Poem-a-Day on May 18, 2024.