A Hermit of Carmel

And Other Poems

By

George Santayana

New York

Charles Scribner's Sons

1901

CONTENTS

A HERMIT OF CARMEL

THE KNIGHT'S RETURN. A Sequel to A Hermit of Carmel

ELEGIAC AND LYRIC POEMS

Premonition
Solipsism
Sybaris
Avila
King's College Chapel
On an Unfinished Statue
Midnight
In Grantchester Meadows
Futility
Before a Statue of Achilles
Odi et Amo
Cathedrals by the Sea
Mont Brévent
The Rustic at the Play
Resurrection

TRANSLATIONS

From Michael Angelo
From Alfred de Musset: Souvenir
From Théophile Gautier: l'Art

CONVIVIAL AND OCCASIONAL VERSES

Prosit Neujahr
Fair Harvard
College Drinking Song
Six Wise Fools
Athletic Ode
The Bottles and the Wine
The Poetic Medium
Young Sammy's first Wild Oats
Spain in America
Youth's Immortality

A HERMIT OF CARMEL

SCENE.—A ravine amid the slopes of Mount Carmel. On one side a hermitage, on the other a rustic cross. The sun is about to set in the sea, which fills the background.

HERMIT. Thou who wast tempted in the wilderness,
Guard me this night, for there are snares in sleep
That baffle watching. O poisoned, bitter life
Of doubt and longing! Were death possible,
Who would not choose it? But that dim estate
Might plunge my witless ghost in grosser matter
And in still closer meshes choke my life.
Yet thus to live is grievous agony,
When sleep and thirst, hunger and weariness,
And the sharp goads of thought-awakened lust
Torture the flesh, and inward doubt of all
Embitters with its lurking mockery
Virtue's sad victories. This wilderness
Whither I fly from the approach of men
Keeps not the devil out. The treacherous glens
Are full of imps, and ghosts in moonlit vesture
Startle the watches of the lidless night.
The giant forest, in my youth so fair,
Is now a den of demons; the hoarse sea
Is foul with monsters hungry for my soul;
The dark and pregnant soil, once innocent
Mother of flowers, reeks with venomous worms,
And sore temptation is in all the world.
But hist! A sound, as if of clanking hoofs.
Saint Anthony protect me from the fiend,
Whether he come in guise of horned