By Antonio Machado

With the morning dew,
stand forth from the mists
white peaks, green meadows.
The sun on the oak groves!
The larks climb so far
they melt into sky.
Who feathered the fields?
Who made wings of wild earth?
Above the tall ranges,
on broad sunlit wings the eagle rides the wind.
Above the sharp peak
where the river rises,
the turquoise lake,
the ravines deep in pines,
above twenty hamlets.
and a hundred roads
Mistress eagle, where bound
so early in the morning,
so steadily flapping down highways of air?

From Selected Poems, translated by A. S. Trueblood

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