the evening hours by émile verhaeren author of "the sunlit hours," "afternoon," etc. translated by charles r. murphy new york john lane company mcmxviii a celle qui vit a mes côtés contents i. "tender flowers, light as the sea's foam" ii. "if it be true" iii. "dead is the glycin and the hawthorne flower" iv. "draw your chair to mine" v. "be kind and comforting to us, oh light!" vi. "alas, the time of crimson phlox is past" vii. "the evening falls, the moon is gold" viii. "when you store away in fragrant shelves" ix. "fallen is the leafage from above" x. "when the star-lit heaven broods above our house" xi. "that very love which made you be for me" xii. "those clear welcoming flowers along the wall's extent" xiii. "when the diamond grains of fresh snow" xiv. "if fate has saved us from the banal sins" xv. "no, my soul has never tired of you!" xvi. "ah, we are happy still and proud to live" xvii. "alas, must we accept the weight of years" xviii. "all little facts, the things of no account" xix. "come to our threshold now, oh snow" xx. "when our clear garden lifted up its flow'rs" xxi. "with withered hands i touch your brow" xxii. "our hearts once burned in joyous days" xxiii. "this wrinkled winter when the ruined sun" xxiv. "perhaps" xxv. "clasped about my neck and harbouring my breast" xxvi. "when you shall close these eyes of mine to light" the evening hours i tender flowers, light as the sea's foam, graced our garden way; the lapsing wind would give your hands caress and with your hair would play. the shade was kind to our united steps that wandered soberly; and from the village a child's song arose to fill infinity. our ponds extended in the autumn light beneath the guarding reed, and the wood's forehead showed its mobile crown to pools upon the mead. and we, who knew our hearts were murmuring in union but one prayer, thought that it was our peaceful life the eve showed unveiled there. supremely then you saw the sky aglow for a farewell caress; and long and long you looked on it with eyes filled with mute tenderness. ii if it be true that garden flower or meadow tree may hold still any memory of lovers past who once looked on their splendour or their purity, so shall our love return once more in that long hour of long regret to give the rose, or in the oak restore, its sweetness or its strength, ere death come yet. thus shall it survive unconquered within the glory that belongs to simple things, and find a joy again, in light that cleaves the sky on summer break of day, and find a joy again in the sweet rain that dwells in drops on hanging leaves. and if on some fair eve, from depths of space, should come two lovers hand in hand, the oak, like a large and puissant wing would reach its shadow out to where they stand, and the rose would give them of its perfumed grace. iii dead is the glycin and the hawthorne flower; but now is the time when heather-bloom is seen, and on this so calm eve the rustling wind brings you the fragrance of the starved campine. love and breathe them, thinking of its fate; over that rugged soil the storm-wind lives; sand and sea have made of it their prey, yet of the little left, it ever gives. of old, though autumn came, we dwelled with it, with plain and forest, with the storm and light, until the angels of the christmas time inscribed its legend with their winged flight. your heart became more simple and more sure; we loved the villagers and the forlorn old women who would speak of their great age and of old spinning-wheels their hands had worn. our quiet house upon the misty heath was frank and welcoming to all who came; its roof was dear to us, its door and sill, and hearth long blackened by familiar flame. when over vast, pale, measureless repose the total splendour of the night was set, a lesson of deep silence we received, whose ardour never shall our souls forget. since we were more alone amid the plain, the dawn and evening entered more our thought, our eyes were franker and our hearts more sweet and with the world's desire more fully fraught. we found content in not exacting it; the sadness, even, of the days was kind, and the rare sunlight of the autumn's end charmed us the more that it seemed weak and blind. dead is the glycin and the hawthorne flower; but now are the days when heather-bloom is seen, remember these, and let the rustling wind bring you the fragrance of the starved campine. iv draw your chair to mine and stretch your hands to the hearth', that i may see between your fingers shine the ancient flame; and look upon the fire quietly, with your eyes that have no fear of any light, so that for me they be the same, yet franker when the blaze leaps higher making them as from deep within you, bright. ah, how fair still is our life and fain! when the clock strikes out its notes of gold and i approach you and as a flower hold; and a fever slow and pure, which we will not to restrain, leads the kiss, marvellous and sure, from hand to brow, from brow to lips again. how well i love you, o my clear beloved, your swooning body, caressing and caressed, in whose depth of joy i almost drown. all is more dear to me, your lips, your arms close-pressed, and your kind bosom whereon my tired head after the rapture you bestow, sinks down quietly, near your heart to find its rest. i love you still more after love's sharp pain when your goodness still more sure and motherly brings repose to passion's ardency, and, when desire has cried aloud its will, i hear approach familiar joy again, with steps that almost silence are, it is so still. v be kind and comforting to us, oh light! and bathe our foreheads now, oh wintry ray! when we two issue forth this afternoon to breathe together the last warmth of day. we loved you formerly with such a pride, with such a love as our two souls could lend, that a supreme and sweet and friendly flame is due us now that we await the end. you are that which no man may forget, from dawn that smites his arm unconquered to evening when you sleep within his eyes your strength abolished and your splendour dead. always for us you were the seen desire spreading through all, luminous and free, that with impassioned ardour deep and high seemed from our heart to seek infinity. vi alas the time of crimson phlox is past and of proud roses brightening the gate. what matter? still i love with all my heart our garden, tho' deflow'red and desolate. more dear than are the joyous summer noons, my garden is that now forlornly grieves; oh the last perfumes languidly exhaled by a late flower in the lingering leaves! this evening i wandered in the paths over the plants my fervent touch to pass, and falling on my knees i pressed my lips to the wet earth among the trembling grass. and now that it is dying and the night has misted all the garden with its breath, my being that so dwells in all this ruin shall learn to die in sharing thus its death. vii the evening falls, the moon is gold.... before the day is spent go out and wander in the garden walks and pluck with gentle hands the few remaining flowers that on their stalks are not yet sadly bent toward the mould. what matter if their foliage be wan? we still admire and love, and still their chalices are beautiful above the stems they rest upon. you wander mid the borders here and there along a lonely path, and the flowers you bear tremble in your hand that shudders as it takes. and now your dreamy fingers reverently shape the sere roses wherein autumn lingers, weaving them with many a tear, into a crown of pale, clear flakes. the last light dwells upon your eyes and brow and your slow steps are sad and quiet now.... slowly, at the vesper, through the gloam, with empty hands you wandered home, leaving, upon a little humid mound, on the path that to our doorway led, the pale circlet that your fingers bound. and i knew that in our garden perished, where winds now pass like cohorts over-head, you would give flower again for one last time, to our youth that lies upon the ground dead.... viii when you store away in fragrant shelves, some autumn eve, the fruits of orchard trees, i seem to see you calmly ranging there our old, but fresh and perfumed memories. and love returns for them as once they were, the wind on lips and sunlight in my eyes; i see the vanished moments once again, their joy, their mirth, their fevers and their cries. the past comes back to life with such desire to be the present with its force again, that half-extinct fires burn with sudden flame, my heart exults and swoons as though in pain. oh fruits that glow amid the autumn shadows, jewels fallen from the summer's string of gems, illumining our sombre hours, what red awakening is this you bring! ix fallen is the leafage from above that covered all the garden with its shade; see, between the naked boughs far off the village roofs to the horizon fade. while summer flamed its joy, neither of us saw them clustered there so near our home; but to-day, with leaf and flower dead, into our thinking they more often come. others are living there behind those walls and those worn thresholds with the porch above, having for only friends the wind and rain and the lighted lamp to give them love. in the fall of eve, when fires are lit, and the pauses of the clock they heed, dear, as to us, the silence is to them, the thoughts within their eyes that they may read. those hours of intimacy naught disturbs, of tender and profound tranquillity, blessing the instant past for having been and finding dearer yet the one to be. see how they hold between their trembling hands a happiness of pain and pleasure born; known to each the other's body old and aged eyes by the same sorrows worn. the flowers of their life, they love them faded, the final perfume and the beauty brief, and heavy memory of glory waning, wasting in time's garden, leaf by leaf. deep in their warmth of human feeling hid, from the winter sheltered and reduse, nothing abases them or makes them pine and plead for days they are content to lose. the quiet folk of those old villages, what neighbours are they to our happiness! and how we find our own tears in their eyes, our strength and ardour in their fearlessness! down there, beneath their roofs, by windowside or seated by the glowing fireside, thus, perhaps on such a night of wind and wet, what we have thought of them they think of us. x when the star-lit heaven broods above our house we sit in silence during many hours beneath its soft intensity of light to feel more ardent still these selves of ours. the silver stars are drifting on their way; beneath their flame and all their glistening the great night is deeper and more deep; such calm there is, the sea is listening! what matter if the sea itself be still, if in this infinity so fair, pregnant now with yet unvisioned power, our beating hearts make all the silence there? xi that very love which made you be for me a splendid garden wherein moving tree, made shadow over sward and docile rose, makes you the shelter where i now repose. there garnered are your flowers of desire, your lucent goodness and your gentle fire; but all within a peace profound are furled against harsh winter winds that scar the world. my happiness is warmed within your arms; each little tender word you whisper charms my ear with as familiar a delight as in the time when lilacs blossomed white. your clear and merry humour daily cheers and triumphs over the distress of years; and you yourself smile at the silver hairs that your lovely head so gaily wears. when to my searching kiss your head you bow, i care not for the lines that mark your brow, nor for a vein that traces its bold line upon your hands now safely held in mine. you fear not; and you know most certainly that nothing dies that dares love loyally, and that the flame which nourishes us so feeds upon ruin's self that it may grow. xii those clear welcoming flowers along the wall's extent will be no longer waiting for us at our return; the silken waters that prolonged till they were spent, under a pure sweet sky no longer reach and yearn. of our melancholy plains the flying birds are shy; over the marshes pale mists begin to crawl; autumn, winter! winter, autumn!--oh the cry! in the forest do you hear the dead wood fall? our garden is no longer bridegroom of the light, where once we saw the phlox in glorious surge and flare; gladioli, in dust, once violent, upright, lingeringly have lain them down to perish there. all is without strength or beauty, without fire, fleeing and quailing and crumbling and passing sadly by; oh, turn on me your eyes of light, for i desire there to seek a comer of our early sky! it is there alone our light may still abide, the light that filled the garden once for you and me, long ago, when our lily lifted its white pride and hollyhocks were an ascending ardency. xiii when the diamond grains of fresh snow on our threshold lie, i hear your steps that come and go in the room near by. you move the clear mirror that beside the window stood, and your bunch of keys strikes the drawer of the chest of wood. i hear you stirring now the fire- the live coal flares; and hear you place by silent walls the silent chairs. i hear you wipe the dust from objects as you pass, and your ring resounds against the side of a vibrant glass. and happier am i still, this eve, with your presence dear- to feel you close, and not to see, but always hear. xiv if fate has saved us from the banal sins of cowardly untruth and sad pretence, it is because we would have no constraint whose yoke should bend our will with violence. free and sunlit on your road you fared, strewing with flowers of will your flowers of love; pausing to sustain me when my head bowed to the weight of doubt or fear above. always you were of gesture kind and frank, knowing my heart for you forever burned; for if i loved another--could it be?- always it was to your heart i returned. so pure your eyes were in their weeping that my truth to you became my only lord; i spoke to you then sweet and sacred words, your sorrow and your pardon were your sword. i fell asleep at evening on your breast, glad with return from distance false and bleak to warmth of spring within us, glad within your open arms captivity to seek. xv no, my soul has never tired of you! in the time of june you said to me: "if i thought, beloved, if i thought that my love would ever weary you, with my sad thoughts and my lonely heart, no matter where, i should depart...." and sweetly sought the kiss i gave anew. and you said again: "one loses everything, life would repay; what though it be of gold, the chain that in one harbour's ring can hold our human ships to-day?" and sweetly wept for pain you could not say. and you said again and yet again: "let us separate, before we be untrue; our life's too pure and high to draw it out from fault to fault, and drain it wearily away...." you sought to fly from me whose desperate hands strove to retain. no, my soul has never tired of you! xvi ah, we are happy still and proud to live when the last ray, that's seen and then is lost, brightens an instant the poor flowers of rime engraved upon our window by the frost. life leaps within us and hope sweeps us on; and our garden, though it be now old, though its paths be strewn with fallen boughs, seems living, pure and dear and lit with gold. something invades our blood, intrepid, bright, and urges us to incarnate again immense, full summer in the fervid kiss that desperately we give each other then. xvii alas, must we accept the weight of years and find us nothing more than tranquil folk who give each other infantile caress at eve, when hearth is quick with flame and smoke? our dear belongings, shall they see us then creeping from the hearth to wooden chest, to reach the window leaning on the wall, sitting to give our tottering bodies rest? if such a day must then affirm our ruin and show the torpor brain or body fears, in spite of this fate we shall not complain, but keep within our breasts our captive tears. for we shall guard these eyes of ours to watch for morn to follow night so pitiful, and see the sun of dawn burn on this life, making of earth itself a miracle. xviii all little facts, the things of no account, a letter, date, an anniversary, a word that's spoken as on days long past, exalt, on these long evenings, you and me. we solemnise, we two, these simple things and count and recount all these gems of ours, so that what is left of our high selves may face valiantly these sombre hours. and we are jealous more than it is meet of these poor, gentle, friendly memories who seat themselves with us beside the fire with winter flowers laid across thin knees. and the bread of happiness which once we did partake of, now they sit and eat; the bread on which our love has fed so long that now it finds the very crumbs are sweet. xix come to our threshold now, oh snow, strew thy pallid ash, oh peaceful and slow falling snow; the linden in the garden hangs its branches low and to the sky no flights of wood-larks go. oh snow, who warmest and dost shield the corn that is hardly sprung with the moss, with the down strewn on the spreading field! silent snow, oh friendly one to houses sleeping in the morning calm, cover our roof and brush our window-frames; oh luminous snow, into our very soul to find a way do thou not scorn, snow that warmest still our last of dreams like the springing corn. xx when our clear garden lifted up its flow'rs the self-accusations made by each for failure of our love, broke into speech in passionate hours; and needed pardon offered and new peace and explanations of our miseries and tears that wet our sad and truthful eyes gave love increase. but in these months of dreary rain when all retires to earth again, when even light is fain to find its war with darkness vain, no longer are our souls so strong and proud that, rapturously, they should confess aloud. in lowered voice our sins we say, though still in tenderness, not scorn; but 'tis at twilight now and not at morn. sometimes we even count them, wrong by wrong, like things that one counts over and puts away; and their folly or their hurt to cover we argue long. xxi with withered hands i touch your brow and part your hair and kiss--(as the day dies and you are briefly sleeping by the hearth) beneath long lashes hid, your fervent eyes. oh the dear tenderness of sinking day! i think of the long years whose flight we saw, and suddenly your life in them appears so perfect that my love is filled with awe. and as in that time when we were betrothed, ardour again is in me and has brought desire to kneel and touch your beating breast with fingers that are chaste as is my thought. xxii our hearts once burned in joyous days with love as luminous as high, but age to-day has made us weak with faults we dare deny. thou dost not nourish us, oh will, by thine ardour in the strife, but soft benevolence alone colours now our life. we near thy brink of setting, love, and try to hide our frailty's pain in banal words and poor discourse of wisdom slow and vain. how sad the future then would be, if when our days grow wintrier there flame not forth the memory of the proud souls we were. xxiii this wrinkled winter when the ruined sun founders in the west and sinks below, i love to say your name, so grave and slow, while the clock strikes another day now done. and saying it so ravishes my voice that from my lips it sinks into my heart, and among all sweet words that there have part, makes me the most ardently rejoice. and in the wind of dawn or evening's breath changeless i reiterate the theme; oh, think with what a passion, strong, supreme, shall i pronounce it at the hour of death! xxiv perhaps, on my last day, perhaps, across my window sill, the sunlight frail and still will fall and for a moment stay.... my hands--my hands then poor and witherèd- by its glory will be made to gold; slowly its kiss will glide, profound and bright, for the last time upon my mouth and head; and the flowers of my eyes, pale yet bold, before they close, shall render back its light. sun, i loved your strength and clarity, indeed! my sweet and fiery poems at their height have held you captive in the heart of them; like field of wheat that surges in the might of summer wind my words exalted you. oh sun, who bring to birth and flower the stem, oh immense friend, of whom our pride has need, in that so grave, imperious hour and new, when my old heart sadly endures the test, be you still its witness and its guest! xxv clasped about my neck and harbouring my breast, ah your so dear hands now and their slow caress, when i tell you, in the evening, how my strength grows leaden day by day with weight of feebleness! you wish it not that 1 become shadow and ruin like all those who obey the gloomy night's behests, though it be with laurel in their mournful hands and glory sleeping in their hollow breasts. ah how time's harsh law is softened by your love and how your lovely dream disconsolate tears would stem; for the first and only time you nurse with lies my heart that finds excuse and gives you thanks for them. which, however, knows all ardour is in vain against what is and all that must be in the strife, and that perhaps there is profounder happiness to end thus in your eyes my lovely human life. xxvi when you shall close these eyes of mine to light, oh kiss them long--for all that love afire may hope to give they shall have given you in that last look of ultimate desire. beneath the moveless glow of candle light, oh lean to them your face so fain and brave that on them be impressed this sight alone that they shall keep forever in the grave. and may i feel, before the tomb is mine, upon the pure, white bed our hands that seek each other once again, and near my head feel for the last time repose your cheek; and know that i shall go away with heart burning still for you so passionately that even through the mute and stony earth the dead themselves shall feel its ardency! the sunlit hours by émile verhaeren translated by charles r. murphy new york john lane company m cm xvi contents i. "o, the splendour of this joy of ours" ii. "what tho' we see it break before us into flowers" iii. "this carven column whereon monsters cling" iv. "the night, unfolding, banishes the day" v. "remembering thy gracious gift to me" vi. "at times thou art the spacious light and air" vii. "oh, let it knock upon our door" viii. "i have given all my heart to thee" ix. "the youthful spring with wondrous might" x. "come out into the garden fair" xi. "how swiftly is she caught in ecstasy" xii. "at that time when in loneliness i stood" xiii. "of what avail the hectic reasoning" xiv. "quietly, like stately queens of old" xv. "to all thy smiles and tears" xvi. "i bathe in thy two eyes my soul entire" xvii. "that love within our eyes may be" xviii. "mid-summer blooms within our quiet garden-ways" xix. "may thy dear eyes, thy clear eyes, be" xx. "tell me, oh my tranquil friend" xxi. "in those hours when we seem shut out" xxii. "oh, this happiness" xxiii. "oh, let us live out love with all our powers" xxiv. "no sooner lip to lip, than we are fraught" xxv. "that nothing may elude our close embrace" xxvi. "although, the autumn eves" xxvii. "the gift of body, when the soul is given" xxviii. "was there ever in us one caress" xxix. "this fair garden flowering to flame" xxx. "if it ever be" the sunlit hours i o the splendour of this joy of ours, woven of gold of the sun-lit hours! here stands the house in soft repose, the garden and the orchard-close. here is the bench beneath the apple trees where lazily the blanched spring its petals now doth fling. and here the luminous birds one sees soaring, like presages of light, in the clear heaven of their flight. and here, as of caresses rained in showers from the lips of the higher blue, two lovely tarns of softest hue, bordered naively with involuntary flowers. o the splendour of our joy, for we live doubly, in ourselves, and day's high ecstasy. ii what tho' we see it break before us into flowers, this garden where we pass the clear and silent hours? in our two hearts are spirit-flow'rs unfurled, where blooms the fairest garden in the world. for as flow'rs we live and breathe when in laughter love breaks forth, and our sorrows sigh like trees in the dark winds from the north; for we live as limpid lakes at calm that mirror roses heavy with their balm, and rich vermilion lilies of the south, each like a warm red mouth; for we utter all delight that leaps in feasts and in the spring when in vows our words take flight, soar exultant on the wing. oh! what flowers are in our hearts unfurl'd within the fairest garden in the world! iii this carven column whereon monsters cling and twist among themselves with ravening jaws, they seem to pant, and grip with mighty claws, and from each other anguished cries to wring- this was my soul before it knew thyself, oh, thou the ever new, the ever old! who earnest forth to me from deeps of self ardour between thy hands and joy untold. i breathe a scent of faint familiar flow'rs within thy heart that sleep; and thirsty memory drinks deep of kindred echoes from past years of ours; at the same instants in our childhood, tears, unknowing, we have wept; we must have known like gladness and like fears, like trysts with grief have kept; long since was i bound to thee as thine own by one who came, inscrutable, unknown, upon my life's adventurous battle field. oh! had i searched his face, forgetting fear, i should have known thine eyes this many a year, that there between his eyelids were reveal'd! iv the night, unfolding, banishes the day; the moon seems, in its long survey, to brood upon the sleeping silences; all the air is pure and clear, pure and pale afar and near, and clear the waters in the friendly mead; what agony is in the slow and steady drip of water from a reed, that sounds and then is hushed below! but in my hands thy hands i hold; thy steadfast eyes enfold mine eyes; i see thy peace like purest water undefiled by cloudy fear, undimmed by hovering wraith of doubt, and oh, i see the perfect faith that rests within us like a sleeping child. v remembering thy gracious gift to me, so simple, so profound, my wondering heart is lost in prayer to thee. how long it seemed before i, groping, found and knocked at thy heart's door; and from how far i came at last to thee whose hands were stretched in silent search for me. my heart was eaten by corroding rust that preyed upon my strength, defiled my trust; i was weary, i was old with long mistrust, i sickened of the roadway's empty length. when thy feet wandered into my life's way they brought a joy so exquisite to me that, trembling and in tears, i can but stay to worship silently. vi at times thou art the spacious light and air of all this tranquil morning garden, where sinuous paths wind in the blue haze like swans upon the deep blue water-ways. at other times thou art the shivering wind exultant, cool, who passes, running fingers light and kind along the clear brow of the pool. when with thy two hands thou touchest me, i feel the brushing of cool leaves against my cheek; when midday cleaves the dimness, all the shadows secretly meditate the words that thou didst speak. so all the hours pass by some sweet grace of thine, into my heart; and when at last the wan night comes apace and rapt in sleep and still, apart, thy spirit lies, feel thro' thy closed eyelids how mine eyes dwell on thee with a love beyond compare, more humble and more clinging than a prayer. vii oh, let it knock upon our door, that hand that taps with futile touch; we have our joy, the rest--what can it offer more? the rest with futile, listless touch? let them pass our door, the wearied, mirthless joys with their tinsel and their toys. let laughter rise and sound and disappear; the crowd move on with million voices clear. the moment is so fair with light in this garden all about; the moment is so rare with new-born light deep within us and without! ah, 'tis the part of wisdom, dear; no longer seek we those who go by the long highway drear, with heavy feet and singing low. but stay we here, contented as of old, though night itself strike out the sky above, loving within us the idea we hold of this most wondrous, steadfast thing, our love. viii i have given all my heart to thee as simply as a child giving a dewy flower, fresh and wild; i pressed it to my lips and gave it thee- i broke the flower's stem with burning hand; speak not, for words may hurt; but with thine eyes speak to my soul that it may understand. the flow'r that is my heart, my sacrifice, tells thee quite simply that one must confide in virgin love, as children trust in god who is so good and great and wise. let the bold spirit revel in the hills in wilful dalliance and vanity, but let us worship in simplicity the very truth that holds our hearts and wills; nor can love be more fully said than when soul speaks to soul at night, and overhead the innumerable silent stars like eyes burn each on each, a speaking that surpasses speech, amid the barkening silence of the skies. ix the youthful spring with wondrous might bursts out in all its clarity upon our wistful words and sight, and bathes them deep in purity. the wind and the slender lips of the flowers, trembling, scatter abroad in showers their syllables of light. but the soul of us will not be caught within the chains that language wrought; one simple flight of spirit doth enshrine, better than word or fitful thought, our joy in its abiding place divine,- that heaven of thine wherein thy soul kneels gently down to mine, and that where wistfully my soul kneels humbly there to thine. x come out into the garden fair where now the brooding eve has closed the flowers with its tranquil light, and in thy soul let sink the peaceful night; for no longer may its gloom achieve to trouble our deep prayer. above, the crystal stars are shining forth with light translucent and more pure than ever came from out the frozen north; beyond them all, the peaceful skies endure. the million voices of this mystery murmur around thee, the million laws of nature's realm are stirring about thee. the silver tides from all the universe o'erwhelm thy heart, but thou hast naught of fear or strife, for thy soul knows--it is that love may be, the love that is the work of life and its mystery in thee. take then this peace the skies have sent, and lay it to thy soul, since fear has gone, this peace that floats, like some strange dawn, across the midnight of the firmament. xi how swiftly is she caught in ecstasy, with her clear eyes of leaping flame; she, so sweet with clarity, meek before life's sternest claim. this eve how sudden fervour rayed her eyes! a simple word did entrance yield to the garden where she stood revealed both queen and serving maid! so meek herself, but for us two on fire; to her must kneel whoever doth desire the harvest of that joy that rolls from out our two surchargèd souls. we heard exulting love within us seek the quiet refuge of our hearts once more, and the living silence speak words we dreamed not of before! xii at that time when in loneliness i stood, and desolation deep within me froze my life, you shone from out the multitude- a glowing window on a winter eve across the windy surface of the snows. your piteous heart brought sweet reprieve, caressingly, to me in need, like breath of spring from off some warmèd mead. and faith did then command that frankness, tenderness and troth should dwell with friendly hand in hand within the wind-hushed stillness of us both. since then, though summer melts the winter cold within, and under skies whose leaping fire designs with gold all the winding pathways of our thought; though flaming love itself is brought to far-flung blossoms of desire, that endlessly, to gain in might, seek endless birth anew; always i look to that dear light whose sweetness first i knew. xiii of what avail the hectic reasoning of what we were and what we may attain? all doubt is dead within this close where spring unfolds within us far from life and pain. i reason not, nor do i seek to know, for naught can trouble that within whose scope are all of sweet impulse and sudden fervour's glow, and tranquil flight to sanctuaried hope. before i knew, i felt thy clarity; and 'tis my joy above all else to fill my heart with love nor question why thy voice so calls to me. come, let our hearts be true--the day insure to us the tenderness without the strife, and let them say that life was never made to reach a love so pure. xiv quietly, like stately queens of old who, step by languid step, descend the stairs of gold in fairy tales, thou movest in my dream; names i give thee, such as must beseem all beauty and all radiance; names that soothe, resounding silken-smooth, sounds that wind and waver, glide and glance, weaving my poems, as in subtle dance. ah, but how soon i leave this play when i behold thy wistful way, thine unadorned, profoundly wistful way; thy forehead unafraid and calmer than the day, thy peaceful child-like hands laid open on thy knees, thy breathing bosom and the dreamful ease that on thy deep and limpid spirit lies. how useless and how little in the sight of this are all things--all things, save the naked light that wells up from thy heart and gathers in thine eyes. xv to all thy smiles and tears my sweetest thoughts i give, those from a brimming heart, and those that live too deep for language to impart. to all thy smiles and tears, and to thy soul, my soul, with all its smiles and tears, and its caress. see thou, how dawn has blanched all the earth, the shades of gloom seem put to flight, to vanish comfortless; the lonely lakes have caught the morning's light, the wet flow'rs glisten and are filled with mirth, and the golden woods have swept away the night. oh, that i might at last enter upon the joyous way, oh, that i might at last, with a victor's joy and a victor's pride, and thou by my side- oh, that i might at last enter with thee into love's full day! xvi i bathe in thy two eyes my soul entire, as tho' in purest water it were laid, and in their sanctities i quench its fire that tempered and more keen it may be made. oh, to join in utter purity, as two stain'd windows, smitten by the sun, mingle their lights in separate clarity and melt to one! i am sometimes impatient of my lot as being one who has not and can not attain the perfectness he would espouse; my heart beats on the bars that are its vows- my heart whose evil blossoms push their way between the rocks of blind brutality and flaunt shamefacedly their swarthy flow'rs in sinister array. my heart so false--so true--as change the years, my heart of very contradiction made- exaggerating heart where merge and shade immensities of joy and startl'd fears. xvii that love within our eyes may be uttered with all clarity; oh, let us cleanse our looks from those that chose the way of life's brutality. the dawn has flowered in red and gold, strange softened light and mist; it seems as though some tender down of gold and silver through the twilight kissed, with dim caresses, all our garden-ways; our mysterious lake displays its trembling sheen of golden light; beneath the trees swoon birds in emerald flight; and dawn, from off the gloomy plain, the hillside steep, doth sweep the last grey ashes of unwilling night. xviii mid-summer blooms within our quiet garden-ways; a golden peacock down the dusky alley strays; gay flower petals strew --pearl, emerald and blue- the curving slopes of fragrant summer grass; the pools are clear as glass between the white cups of the lily-flowers; the currants are like jewelled fairy-bowers; a dazzling insect worries the heart of a rose, where a delicate fern a filmy shadow throws, and airy as bubbles the thousands of bees over the young grape-clusters swarm as they please. the air is pearly, iridescent, pure; these profound and radiant noons mature, unfolding even as odorous roses of clear light; familiar roads to distances invite like slow and graceful gestures, one by one bound for the pearly-hued horizon and the sun. surely the summer clothes, with all her arts, no other garden with such grace and power; and 'tis the poignant joy close-folded in our hearts that cries its life aloud from every flaming flower. xix may thy dear eyes, thy clear eyes, be to me on earth the pledges of felicity. and may our kindled souls, in showers, clothe with gold each flaming thought of ours. that my two hands against thy heart ne'er cease to be to thee on earth the emblem of all peace. and may we live as two lost prayers implore, one to the other yearning evermore. may our kisses be, on lips in strife, to us on earth the symbols of our life. xx tell me, oh my tranquil friend, how absence of a day untuned and brought our song of love to end, and wakened every sleeping wound. i go to meet all those that come from out that land of mystery where thou did'st go toward the red sun-rise; beneath a tree i sit, and cold and dumb, down the long road spy eagerly; and long i look with fervour on the eyes still lustrous with the sight of thee; i'd kiss those fingers, for thy touch less wearisome; i'd utter words whose meaning none perceive; but, dumb, i listen, hear their footfalls reach the shadows where the aged eve holds the black night in leash. xxi in those hours when we seem shut out from all that is not part of us, what cleansing flood is it, so nebulous, that bathes and circles our two hearts about? joining our hands, without a prayer, arm to arm, without a cry, seeking we know not what nor where, something far off, more pure than thou or i- thou fervent soul, oh say how does one live in this yearned-for day? in those high hours how deep doth grow our will in front of life's supremacies! what need of other heavens still, wherein with newer gods to cope! what anguish and what ecstasies, and what unflinching hope to be, one day, through death itself, the prey of these far silent agonies! xxii oh, this happiness, sometimes so rare, so frail, it brings us near distress! in vain we strive, as our hearts fail, to make for us a screening tent with all thy wondrous hair to shelter us from care- yet deep within does anguish still ferment. but love, a kneeling angel prays, asking alone for this, that fate may give to others equal days of tenderness and bliss. and on those stormy days when evenings share with highest heaven all their cruel despair, we seek forgiveness as the night unrolls- forgiveness for the sweetness in our souls. xxiii oh, let us live out love with all our powers, aspire audaciously in thoughts most high, that they may interweave in harmony in the supremest ecstasy of ours. because within our twined souls something more pure than aught in us, more sacred, mightier, unrolls- join we our hands, and let us seek it thus. what matters it that naught but tears, our halting speech avail for that whose puissant beauty, as it nears, doth make our two hearts quail? oh, may we thus forever meet love's stern, ensweetened pains, kneeling, by fervour overcome, before the sudden god within that reigns, so violent and so burning sweet, our very souls succumb. xxiv no sooner lip to lip, than we are fraught with sun-lit fervour that o'erpowers, as though two gods within us sought a god-like union in these souls of ours; ah, how we feel divinity is near- our hearts so freshened by their primal might of light, that in their clarity the universe shines clear. ah, joy alone, the ferment of the earth, doth bring to life and stir to far, illimitable birth; as there above, across the bars of heaven, where voyage veils of gossamer, are born the myriad-flowering stars. how for us is design of life profound! all seems as pure as leaping fire- our words so filled with fair desire we say them o'er to hear them ceaseless sound. we are the ones, victorious and sublime, who seek eternity, with humble pride;--our love shall ever be free from the bonds of time. xxv that nothing may elude our close embrace, this depth of holy love, that through the body love be clear with grace, i seek with thee the garden of our love. thy breast is there, an offering, thy hands reach out to me, naive and tender whispering is breathed and heard by thee. the shadows from the branches now o'er thy throat and visage pass, thy hair has spread its blossoms low in garlands, on the grass. all blue and silver broods the night, a silent, sleeping bed, this hour- sweet night! whose breezes one by one deflower the lilies trembling in the low moon's light. xxvi although, these autumn eves, so wistfully, between the trees, all down the paths fall the listless yellow leaves between the trees and down the paths, although while autumn grieves, the night-wind reaps a harvest pale, so wistfully, where the late-blown roses fail loosing petals wan in showers- ah, let no petal from our love fall and wither with the flowers. but let us both lean close above the smouldering hearth of memory- but let us tend and feed the glowing coals and reach our hands and warm our souls against the winter-cold and misery, against the hour that tolls the death of all desire, against our very selves, our stricken passion- oh, lean with me above the blessed fire that memory's hands have kindled in compassion. and if the skies be drowned while passionate autumn roams the world and rakes the woods and the wild lakes, no echo of the madness shall be found in that safe garden, inmost and supreme, here in the breathing stillness sound the quiet footfalls of our dream. xxvii the gift of body, when the soul is given, is naught but harmony of two tendernesses driven one to the other, fervidly. glory in thyself thou findest sweet. so fair in thy fresh purity, only to offer me the wondrous gift complete. i come to thee, and know exaltation in this gift of thine; always the truer, the more pure i grow since thy dear body gave itself to mine. love! oh, may it overflow our hearts and be the reason in our lives, whose maddest happiness is one that strives toward the madness of a trust divine. xxviii was there ever in us one caress, one joyous laugh, or tenderness we dared not strew before us on our way? or ever prayer in silence heard, whose dim, unuttered word we sought to stay? a single yearning of compassion. a quiet vow or one of passion we sought to slay? so, loving thus, our hearts, like two apostles, went seeking the lowly ones with timid brow, who, feeling then so bound to us, proclaimed on high love's ravishment, as a flowery people loves the bough that holds them bathed in the sun's warm ray; our souls, grown greater still by this re-birth, began to glory those who feel love's sway, increasing love by love's own might, to cherish thus divinely the whole earth that seemed reflected in our own souls' light. xxix this fair garden flowering to flame, that seems the wondrous beauty to proclaim of that clear garden whereunto we cleave, is crystallised in frosted gold this eve. a great white silence drops athwart the sky, out there where gleams a marble hue, whither, one by one, the tall trees stride, each with its shadow, long and blue and lonely, by its side. no stir of wind; but soundlessly the blanched veils of cold alone unfold themselves mysteriously on the marshes' silver or the roads' white stone. the stars are lustrous with desire; like furbished steel the rime within the cold, translucid air. from some infinity sublime, across the paleness of a waning moon, falls shower on shower of fire- star-dust that there sinks in a scintillating swoon. it is the hour divine, when wistfully a million eyes look down upon the earth- upon the hazards of our human birth- from out immutable eternity. xxx if it ever be that thou and i should bring one to the other suffering of loss and sorrow; or if fate decree that weariness of banal joys unstring the golden bow within us of desire; if thought's clear crystal vase entire must in our spirits fall and break below; if, spite of all, i lie at last supine, vanquish'd for not having been enough the prey of great, divine, utter nobility- oh! let us be like maddened fools that climb the height beneath the ruin'd sky; and let us closer, closer cling, and in one monstrous flight, with sun-drenched souls, cleave the on-rushing night! (images generously made available by the internet archive.) afternoon by émile verhaeren author of "poems," "the sunlit hours," etc. translated by charles r. murphy new york john lane company mcmxvii contents i. "slowly maturity has come to our surprise" ii. "roses of june, you the most fair" iii. "if other flowers decorate our home" iv. "shadows are lustral in the iris'd dawn" v. "i bring you, this eve, an offering of joy" vi. "come, let us rest a while beside the path" vii. "sweetly and more sweetly still" viii. "within the house our love has chosen for its birth" ix. "my pleasant work by open windows wide" x. "all faith lies at the bottom of our love" xi. "dawn, shadow, evening, space and stars: what night" xii. "it is the pleasant hours when lamps are lit" xiii. "dead kisses of the long dead years" xiv. "it is now fifteen years that we have thought as one" xv. "i thought our joy had been forever dulled" xvi. "all that lives about us here" xvii. "with all my heart and brain, my feeling and my seeing" xviii. "oh days of fresh and quiet healthfulness" xix. "i have left the groves of sleep" xx. "alas! when the poison of disease" xxi. "within the garden there is healthfulness" xxii. "it was june in the garden" xxiii. "your gift of self is ever prodigal" xxiv. "o quiet garden wherein nothing moves" xxv. "as with others, time and change and strife" xxvi. "the golden ships of summer time" xxvii. "fervency of sense, of heart, of soul" xxviii. "the moveless beauty" xxix. "you spoke that evening words so beautiful" xxx. "sun-lit hours," "hours of afternoon" afternoon i slowly maturity has come to our surprise, placing its hands upon the naked forehead of our love, looking upon it with its dimmer eyes. and, in the garden shrivelled by july, the flowers and shrubs and vibrant leaves have let fall their fervent powers which lie over the misty pond and gentle paths. and bitterly the jealous sun now shows harshly a brilliant shadow round its light that grieves. and yet, see how the fearless hollyhocks aspire ardently to their own splendid fire! see how season after season's stress is vain--the fibres of our hearts deeper than ever and insatiable, are rooted firmly in our happiness. oh hours of afternoon, fragrant with rose, clutching at time, with cheek in flower and flame, seeking, against his chilly side, repose! and nothing, nothing is better than to feel happy and limpid still--after what years? but if fate had willed above for us two naught but suffering and tears, still, would i have wished to live and die complaintless, in such unrelenting love! ii roses of june, you the most fair, you with your hearts transpierced by sun; violent, tranquil roses, with the air of halted flights of birds upon a bough; roses of june and july, straight and new-begun, mouths whose kisses all at once are thrilled with the wind or with it stilled, caressing with shade and gold the moving green; roses mutely ardent and sweet willed, voluptuous roses in your sheaths of moss, you who pass the long summer time loving each other in this clarity sublime; fresh, magnificent, vivid--like you, oh roses, is our multitudinous desire that in lassitude or leaping fire loves, exalts, and then reposes! iii if other flowers decorate our home, and multiply the splendour of this place, the little lake shines ever from the grass with the large eyes of its ever moving face. ah, say, from what deep distances unknown so many gleaming birds have come with wings sun-sown? july has driven april from the close and bluish tints have given place to red, the skies are torpid and the wind has fled; joyously brilliant insects fill the air that harks, and summer wanders by, robed with diamonds and sparks. iv shadows are lustral in the iris'd dawn; from a branch on high whence a bird has fled dew drops tremble and are gone. purity, delicate and fair, beautifies the hour that brings crystal brilliance to the air; we hear the sounds of water and the brush of wings. oh! how your eyes are beauteous at this hour when our silver lake is gleaming in the sight of the day arising; your forehead radiant and your heart-beat light. intensity of life, its goodness and its power, like to a mighty blessedness of your soul are part, so that to contain the anguish and the stress, suddenly your hands have clasped my own, laying them, as though with fear, against your heart. v i bring you, this eve, an offering of joy from having drenched my body in the gold and silken texture of the joyous wind and in the yellow splendour of the sun; my feet are pure with having walked the grass, my hands are sweet with the dim hearts of flowers, my eyes are brilliant with the sudden tears born in an instant from the sight of such a beauteous earth and its eternal night. space, with arms of burning clarity, drunk and fervent, sobbing, led me on, and i have gone down there--i know not where- where all my captive cries did free my steps; i bring you life and beauty of the plains; take from me their free and bounteous breath; storms have laid caresses on my hands, and air and light and perfume are in me. vi come, let us rest a while beside the path, upon the aged bench long stained with mould, and let me leave, between your two sure hands, my hand, abandoned to your gentle hold. and as my hand that lies upon your knees is glad to be abandoned there and knows contentment, so my sweet and fervent heart between your gentle hands has found repose. and there is joy intense and love profound of which we do partake together now, nor trembles on our lips a single word too strong, nor any kiss that burns your brow. we would prolong the ardour of this silence, of mute desires the immobility, save that, when they quiver of a sudden, i press your pensive hands unknowingly- your hands wherein my happiness is sealed- your hands which never would attempt to reach to all these sacred and profounder things whereby we live without the need of speech. vii sweetly and more sweetly still cradle in your arms my head, my fevered eyes and forehead wearied; sweetly and more sweetly still kiss my lips and say words made sweeter at each break of day when uttered by your voice: that you are given to me and that i love you still. the day has broken dull and sad; my sleep was swept with sombre dreams; the rain lets down its dusky hair in streams, and skies are lost in dreary clouds that weep. sweetly and more sweetly still cradle in your arms my head, my fevered eyes and forehead wearied; you are to me the gracious morn whose caress is in your hand: behold, i am reborn, with no evil or dismay, unto the daily work which marks my way, --a sign that makes me live in an heroic strife, a sword of beauty and of power divine against invidious life. viii within the house our love has chosen for its birth, with its familiar things that people coign and shade, where we two live alone with only witnesses the roses gazing through the window from the glade; there are some days so filled with reassuring peace, hours of the radiant summer with silence made so fair, i sometimes bring to stillness the balancing of time within the great oak clock that stands close by the stair. then is the hour, the day, the night so part of us that happiness which breathes upon us hears no thing except the ardent throbbing of your heart and mine when quick embraces heart to yearning heart do bring. ix my pleasant work by open windows wide, with shadow of green leafage from out-side and path of the sun's light across my paper white, maintains a gentle violence, a sense of silence in our kindly, pensive house. vividly the flowers lean, and glowing fruits among the boughs are seen, birds on boughs and birds upon the wing chant and sing in order that my verse may ring clear and new, pure and trues as song of birds, and gold of fruits and petals blossoming. down in the garden there i see you pass, over the sunny and the shady grass; but you do not look at me, lest you trouble my tranquillity, as here with jealous heart i fashion poems of a frank and tender passion. x all faith lies at the bottom of our love, joining an ardent thought to everything: the faint awakening blossom, or above downward the drift of petals from a rose; the flight of bird on dark or sun-lit wing; a nest half-falling from a roof that knows much of the wind's harsh manner--here is scope- and in the flowery heart where insects cling, for fear, and all of hope. what matters it if reason with its snows falls chilling on such poignant ecstasy? let us accept it with a mind that knows no false, no true, no evil and no good that it may hold prophetically; let us be happy with our childish eyes, be it an evil or triumphant power; and let us hide from men who are too wise. xi dawn, shadow, evening, space and stars; what night hides in its veils or shows forth mistily, add to their exaltation; they who live in love, live also in eternity. no need that reason light its beacon fires on walls that rear them high above the ground, kindling the docks, the harbour and the sea; for they beyond all ocean's paths are bound. they see the light of dawns touch shore on shore, beyond and far beyond the black sea's space; for certitude and trembling hope themselves, meeting their ardent gaze, have the same face. joyous and limpid is their hungry faith; their soul is the profound and sudden light which burns for them on high and heavenly things; to know the world, within they turn their sight. they go by distant paths and live with truths that bound the far horizon of their eyes, simple and naked, deep, and sweet as dawn; for them alone are songs of paradise. xii it is the pleasant hour when lamps are lit; calmness and consolation over all; the silences so deep that one could hear a feather fall. it is the hour when the belovèd comes, like to the sweetly soft and low wandering mist upon the breeze, sweetly slow. she speaks no word at first--and yet i hark, hark to the soul of her, surprise its gleam and dark, and then i kiss her eyes. it is the pleasant hour when lamps are lit, the vow to love each other through the live-long day from depths of heart made luminous by it. is with us now. and then we speak of simple things; the fruit we gathered in the close, the flowers that disclose, between the verdant mosses thick, their almost wings; and thought does blossom forth once more at memory of a word so fair hid in a just remembered drawer, in a letter of last year. xiii dead kisses of the long dead years have left their mark upon your face, beneath the sad, harsh winds of age of many roses now there is no trace. i see not now your mouth and eyes gleam, like the birth of morning fair, nor softly now your head repose within the dark deep garden of your hair. your dear hands that still are sweet have somehow suffered from the loss of light about their finger-tips that touched my forehead, like the dawn-kissed moss. your body that was fair and young that i did with my thoughts endow, no longer now is fresh as dew, your arm no longer like the white, clean bough. all falls, alas, and fades away, all changes now: your voice once smooth, your body, lowered like a shield to spill the precious victories of youth. and yet my heart says still with fervent stress: what matter that the years grow heavier? since i know well that nothing can e'er bound or trouble our exalted happiness, and that our souls are too profound for love to die for want of loveliness. xiv it is now fifteen years that we have thought as one; and that our passion clear has conquered habitude, such as is wont to injure the most tenacious love with unremitting stress of wasteful hands and rude. and when i look at you i make discoveries, such is the intimacy your pride and sweetness bring; and time, though it has somewhat obscured your loveliness, exalts your heart whose golden depths are opening. naively now you let its hidden depths be searched, your soul yet always seems as fresh as kindled fire; and, like an eager ship with wind-swept masts, our joy voyages upon the seas of our desire. within ourselves alone we anchor all our faith to naked frankness and to high benevolence; and we work and live forever in the light of a joyous and translucent confidence. you have the strength of frailty and infinite purity to walk the sombre roadways, your heart in aureole, and to have cherished dearly in spite of mist or shade, all the rays of morning in your childlike soul. xv i thought our joy had been forever dulled like sun that fades before the day has fled, when sickness, to a bed of weariness, slowly dragged me with its arms of lead. garden and flow'rs were either feared or false; the very light of day was a distress; and my poor hands already were too weak to hold our trembling, captive, happiness. my desires became but evil plants that scourged like thistles in a windy place; i felt my heart both frozen and afire, then arid, and rebellious unto grace. but, nowhere searching save in simple love, the most consoling word of all you spoke; and at the glowing fire of your word i warmed myself until the daylight broke. i was not in your eyes, as in my own, a man belittled by disease and grief; you plucked me flowers from the window-ledge, and i believed in health with your belief. you brought to me within your garments' folds the eager air, the wind of field and wood, scents of the eve and odours of the dawn, and sunlight in your kisses fresh and good. xvi all that lives about us here, beneath a radiance soft and clear, soft grasses, tender branches, hollyhocks, the shade that soothes them, the wind that mocks, the singing birds that one by one join the brilliant swarm, like jewel-clusters, warm with sun; all that lives within the garden wall, love us ingenuously; and we, we love them all. dear to us the lilies that grow high; the reaching sunflowers clearer than the sky --circles that bright lambent tongues enroll- burn, with their glowing fervency, our soul. the simple flowers, phlox and lilac tall, down by the wall, are yearning to be near us too, and the involuntary grass, on the lawn when we pass, opens its moistened eyes that are the dew. we live with the flowers and the grass, simple, pure and ardent still, lost in our love, like single sheaves within the infinite wheat, and proudly let imperial summer pass and from above sweep and pierce with clarity body, heart and will. xvii with all my heart and brain, my feeling and my seeing, and with the flaming torch of all my being that reaches toward your goodness and your love, forever unassuaged, i love and bring you thanks and endless praise for having come in all simplicity along devoted ways, to take, with gracious hands, my destiny. and since you leaned above, i know--oh what a love! candid and clear as is the dew fallen upon my tranquil soul from you. i am yours as by their nerves of flame fire and fuel merge;. all my flesh and all my soul strive to you with undesisting urge; nor do i cease from long remembering the fervency and beauty of our years, till suddenly i feel my eyes are filled deliciously, with unoblivious tears. i come to you happy and resolved with proud desire to be unto your soul he who shall be the surest of its joys. tenderness folds us in an aureole; echoes, within me, at your call assemble; the hour is holy and with rapture fraught, and just to touch your brow my fingers tremble, as though they brushed the pinions of your thought. xviii oh days of fresh and quiet healthfulness when life is filled with beauty without end, and inspiration comes familiarly, a cherished friend. he comes from lands all sweet and glimmering, and with his words, more fair than dew, has brought, wherewith to set, a gem all luminous, a sentiment, a thought. he seizes on our being like a storm, rears up our spirit to new heights untrod, pours down the fire from beating stars, and brings the gift of being god. all fevered transports and profoundest fears to his own tragic will are ever whirled, that the pulse of beauty be made young in the veins of the world. i am at his mercy, am his ardent prey! so, when from weary work i take my way, toward the deep repose which is your love, with all my mind's high leaping fire sublime, it seems--oh, for an instant's time- that i may offer you, oh love, as though of my own pulses it were part, of the great universe itself, the beating heart. xix i have left the groves of sleep, sad a little to leave you hid beneath their branchy roof from morning sun and dew. gleam now phlox and hollyhock; i look on joyous garden site, and know that soon the crystal bells will tinkle in the light. then suddenly i take my way to you, with such a tenderness and love that sweep into my midmost being that it seems my thought has travelled through- to bring you joy of reawakening- all the leafy umbrage of your sleep. and when i come to you within the house, that shade and silence still possess, hear my ardent kisses, fresh and clear, sing you a morning song through meadows of the flesh. xx alas! when the poison of disease ran, with my slow and torpid blood, more sluggish and more torpid day by day, ran in my veins a leaden flood; and my poor eyes saw my hands so thin and white, morosely watched the dreaded course of the hated blight; when i had not even force upon your heart my burning mouth to press there to kiss our happiness; when the days, monotonous and sad, gnawed my consciousness with spite, i never could, myself, have found the will to rise with stoic might, if you had not poured into my veins the secret heroism that you have, daily, every hour of every week, with hands so patient, so serene and brave. xxi within the garden there is healthfulness. lavishly it gives it us in light that cleaves to every movement of its thousand hands of palms and leaves. and the good shade where it accepts, after long journeyings, our steps, pours on the weary limb a force of life and sweetness like its mosses dim. when the lake is playing with the wind and sun, it seems a crimson heart within, all ardent, has begun to throb with the moving wave; the gladiolus and the fervent rose, which in their splendour move unshadowèd, upon their vital stems expose their cups of gold and red. within the garden there is healthfulness. xxii it was june in the garden, it was our time, our day; and our gaze with love on everything did fall; they seemed then softly opening, and they saw and loved us both, the roses all. the sky was purer than all limpid thought; insect and bird swept through the golden texture of the air, unheard; our kisses were so fair they brought exaltation to both light and bird. it seemed as though a happiness at once had skied itself and wished the heavens entire for its resplendent fire; and life, all pulsing life, had entered in, into the fissures of our beings to the core, to fling them higher. and there was nothing but invocatory cries, mad impulses, prayers and vows that cleave the arched skies, and sudden yearning to create new gods, in order to believe. xxiii your gift of self is ever prodigal; the flight that wings you higher is above, above cessation and all weariness, reaching toward the heaven of fullest love. a clasp of hands, a glance enfevers you; your heart appears so beautiful and such that i do fear your eyes, your lips, and that i am unworthy and you love too much. alas! the fire and tenderness too high for beings who have only one poor heart, wet with regrets and thorny with its faults, to find but tears to weep with when they part. xxiv o quiet garden wherein nothing moves save, in the glassy lake, the crimson fishes, each a fiery flake. they are the memories that play within our thought, calm and undistraught and clear, as in the water's breast of confidence and rest. the red fish leap and the clear water wells, in the abrupt and potent light, amid the iris green and bleaching shells and motionless stones around the border bright. it is sweet to see them come and go in all the freshness and lucidity that bathes them so; we have no need to fear or fret lest they should bring up from below other than a fugitive regret. xxv as with others, time and change and strife- morose time and moods of hate- have left their sombre scars upon our life; but never yet our hearts have heard, even at close of days unfortunate, the utterance of an unpardonable word. ardent, luminous sincerity was our wisdom and delight, so that our fervid souls in verity tempered themselves as in a bath of light. we told each other our most humble griefs, grief by grief, a rosary, told each other, weeping tears of love; and then confidingly, at each avowal, with our lips we pressed a kiss on every fault confessed. thus simply, without weakness or despair, we save us from ourselves and worldly harms, and ward off suffering and gnawing care, and see our spirits born again; as reappear when washed by rain, when sunlight sweetly dries and warms, the purity of glass and gold of window pane. xxvi the golden ships of summer time that left this morning, mad with space, return now from the blood-red west, sad, with slackened pace. over the ocean now they come, moved by listless, weary rowers; they seem like cradles in the sky where sleep the autumn flowers. lilies, with your faded brows, you have felt the wind's keen breath; only the flaming roses strive to live beyond all death. afternoon what matter for their fullest flower october days or april bright? they have but simple wish to drink, even the sanguine, light; on sombre days, when under clouds haggardly the heavens hide, they will, for one lone ray of sun, exalt at christmastide. you, oh spirits, live like them! they have not pride that lilies feel, but hold within their folds a sacred and immortal zeal. xxvii fervency of sense, of heart, of soul- vain words created to despoil love's powers; sun, you distinguish not between your flames of all your evening, dawn, or midday hours. you move all blinded by your proper light through blazing space, beneath the arched sky, knowing alone that your great, ample power works at things mysterious and high. for love means exaltation's ceaseless deeds; oh you whose sweetness sweetens my proud heart, what need to weigh the pure gold of our dream? i love you wholly, with my every part. xxviii the moveless beauty of the summer evenings, upon the grass where they deploy, gives with symbolic offerings, gestureless, without a word, the deep repose of joy. morning with its surprises has gone where no wind rises; midday itself with folds of velvet air no longer sinks upon the torpid plain; now is the hour when the evening once again without a moving leaf or ripple on lake breast, comes down from lofty hills to our garden where it seeks its rest. oh golden splendour of the burnished lake, and trees and shadows of them on the reeds, and tranquil sumptuous silences that take immutably the kingdom of our hearts, so that within us now a vow we cherish of it to live and die and live again, like two hearts drunk almost to pain with light, who cannot perish! xxix you spoke that evening words so beautiful that even the flowers, leaning on the breeze, suddenly loved us so that one of them, to touch us both, fell down upon our knees. you spoke of the near time when our two lives, like too-ripe fruits, would be upgathered, and how the tocsin of our fate would knell, and love be with us still, though youth had fled. your voice was round me like a close embrace, your burning heart so quiet and so brave, i would have seen unfold without a fear the winding road that leads toward the grave. xxx "sun-lit hours," "hours of afternoon," hours superbly now a part of us! your measured pace lights up our garden paths, our golden roses kiss you as in pain; summer's dying; autumn comes now soon. hours of fragrant flowering, will you come again? and yet if fate, that holds the stars in leash, spare us its evil and its bitter chance, perhaps you shall weave some day before my eyes the measured footfalls of your radiant dance; and i shall add then to your ardent showers of shade and sunlight on the grassy slope --like a supreme, immense and sovereign hope- the steps and farewells of my "twilight hours." poems of emile verhaeren. selected and rendered into english by alma strettell. john lane the bodley head london & new york 1915. index introductory note from "les villages illusoires" rain the ferryman the silence the bell-ringer snow the grave-digger the wind the fishermen the rope-maker from "les heures claires" i. viii. xvii. xxi. from "les apparus dans mes chemins" st. george the gardens she of the garden from "la multiple splendeur" the glory of heavens life joy introductory note. emile verhaeren, remarkable among of the brilliant group of writers representing "young belgium," and one who has been recognized by the literary world of france as holding a foremost place among the lyric poets of the day was born at st. amand, near antwerp, in 1855. his childhood was passed on the banks of the scheldt, in the midst of the wide-spreading flemish plains, a country of mist and flood, of dykes and marshes, and the impressions he received from the mysterious, melancholy character of these surroundings, have produced a marked and lasting influence upon his work. yet the other characteristics with which it is stamped--the wealth of imagination, the gloomy force, the wonderful descriptive power and sense of colour, which set the landscape before one as a picture, suggest rather the possibility of spanish blood in the poet's veins--and again, his somewhat morbid subjectivity and tendency to self-analysis mark him as the child of the latter end of our nineteenth century. verhaeren entered early in life upon the literary career. after some time spent at a college in ghent, he became a student at the university of louvain, and here he founded and edited a journal called "_la semaine_," in which work he was assisted by the singer van dyck, and by his friend and present publisher, edmond deman. he also formed, about this time, a close friendship with maeterlinck. in 1881, verhaeren was called to the bar at brussels, but soon gave up his legal career to devote himself entirely to literature. in 1883 he published his first volume of poems, and shortly afterwards became one of the editors of "_l'art moderne_," to which, as well as to other contemporary periodicals, he was for many years a contributor. in 1892 he founded, with the help of two other friends, the "section of art" in the "house of the people," a popular institution in brussels, where performances of the best music, as well as lectures upon literary and artistic subjects, were given. in spite, however, of the work which all this entailed, and of the many interests created by his ardent appreciation of the various branches of art and literature, verhaeren continued to labour unceasingly at his poetical work, and between 1883 and 1897 brought out successively eleven small volumes: _les flamandes, les moines, les soirs, les débâcles, les flambeaux noirs, les apparus dans mes chemins, les campagnes hallucinées, les villages illusoires, les villes tentaculaires, les heures claires,_ and _les aubes_. throughout this entire series the intellectual and spiritual development of the poet may be closely traced--from the materialism which pervades _les flamandes_, and the despairing pessimism and lurid emotion--the throes of a self-centred soul in revolt against fate--which are so powerfully portrayed in _les débâcles_ and _les flambeaux noirs_, and are apparent even in the opening pages of _les apparus_ dans mes chemins--to the tender, hopeful mysticism which marks the latter poems in that volume, and the wonderful sympathy with nature, even in her saddest aspects--the subtle power of endowing those aspects with a profound and ennobling symbolism, which characterise the most beautiful of the poems in les villages illusoires. les heures claires is the name given to a volume of love-songs, an exquisite record of golden hours spent in a garden at spring-time--spring-time in a double sense. the task of making an adequate and typical selection from a poet's work is always difficult, and in this case it has been decided to limit the field of selection, at least for the present, to the three last-named volumes, which embody what may, i think, be considered as verhaeren's highest achievement in the realm of lyrical poetry. in style, verhaeren is essentially the apostle of the "vers libre"; and his handling of rhyme and rhythm, his coining of words where he finds the french vocabulary insufficient, have called down upon him some criticism from those of his french contemporaries who are sticklers for the older rules and more conventional forms of versification. but however this may be, it remains an undeniable fact that verhaeren has at his command a rare and powerful poetic eloquence--a wealth of imagery, a depth of thought and a subtlety of expression which perhaps are not to be imprisoned behind the bars of a too rigid convention. english readers have already been accustomed by their own poets to the "vers libre," and it is not so much, therefore, for my adherence to this form, as for my failure adequately to render verhaeren's peculiar and striking beauty of language, that i beg their indulgence for the following translations. poems from "les villages illusoires" rain long as unending threads, the long-drawn rain interminably, with its nails of grey, athwart the dull grey day, rakes the green window-pane-so infinitely, endlessly, the rain, the long, long rain. the rain. since yesternight it keeps unravelling down from the frayed and flaccid rags that cling about the sullen sky. the low black sky; since yesternight, so slowly, patiently. unravelling its threads upon the roads. upon the roads and lanes, with even fall continual. along the miles that 'twixt the meadows and the suburbs lie, by roads interminably bent, the files of waggons, with their awnings arched and tall. struggling in sweat and steam, toil slowly by with outline vague as of a funeral. into the ruts, unbroken, regular, stretching out parallel so far that when night comes they seem to join the sky. for hours the water drips; and every tree and every dwelling weeps. drenched as they are with it. with the long rain, tenaciously, with rain indefinite. the rivers, through each rotten dyke that yields. discharge their swollen wave upon the fields. where coils of drownèd hay float far away; and the wild breeze buffets the alders and the walnut-trees; knee-deep in water great black oxen stand, lifting their bellowings sinister on high to the distorted sky; as now the night creeps onward, all the land, thicket and plain, grows cumbered with her clinging shades immense. and still there is the rain, the long, long rain. like soot, so fine and dense. the long, long rain. rain--and its threads identical, and its nails systematical, weaving the garment, mesh by mesh amain, of destitution for each house and wall, and fences that enfold the villages, neglected, grey, and old: chaplets of rags and linen shreds that fall in frayed-out wisps from upright poles and tall. blue pigeon-houses glued against the thatch, and windows with a patch of dingy paper on each lowering pane, houses with straight-set gutters, side by side across the broad stone gambles crucified, mills, uniform, forlorn. each rising from its hillock like a horn, steeples afar and chapels round about, the rain, the long, long rain, through all the winter wears and wears them out. rain, with its many wrinkles, the long rain with its grey nails, and with its watery mane; the long rain of these lands of long ago, the rain, eternal in its torpid flow! the ferryman the ferryman, a green reed 'twixt his teeth, with hand on oar, against the current strong had rowed and rowed so long. but she, alas! whose voice was hailing him across the far waves dim. still further o'er the far waves seemed to float, still further backwards, 'mid the mists, remote. the casements with their eyes. the dial-faces of the towers that rise upon the shore, watched, as he strove and laboured more and more. with frantic bending of the back in two, and start of savage muscles strained anew. one oar was suddenly riven, and by the current driven, with lash of heavy breakers, out to sea. but she, whose voice that hailed him he could hear there 'mid the mist and wind, she seemed to wring her hands with gestures yet more maddening toward him who drew not near. the ferryman with his surviving oar fell harder yet to work, and more and more he strove, till every joint did crack and start, and fevered terror shook his very heart. the rudder broke beneath one sharp, rude stroke; that, too, the current drove relentlessly, a dreary shred of wreckage, out to sea. the casements by the pier, like eyes immense and feverish open wide, the dials of the towers--those widows drear upstanding straight from mile to mile beside the banks of rivers--obstinately gaze upon this madman, in his headstrong craze prolonging his mad voyage 'gainst the tide. but she, who yonder in the mist-clouds hailed him still so desperately, she wailed and wailed, with head outstretched in fearful, straining haste toward the unknown of the outstretched waste. steady as one that had in bronze been cast, amid the blenched, grey tempest and the blast. the ferryman his single oar yet plied. and, spite of all, still lashed and bit the tide. his old eyes, with hallucinated gaze, saw that far distance--an illumined haze-whence the voice sounded, coming toward him still. beneath the cold skies, lamentable, shrill. the last oar broke-and this the current hurried at one stroke, like a frail straw, towards the distant sea. the ferryman, with arms dropped helplessly sank on his bench, forlorn. his loins with vain efforts broken, torn. drifting, his barque struck somewhere, as by chance, he turned a glance towards the bank behind him then--and saw he had not left the shore. the casements and the dials, one by one. their huge eyes gazing in a foolish stare. witnessed the ruin of his ardour there; but still the old, tenacious ferryman firm in his teeth--for god knows when, indeed-held the green reed. the silence ever since ending of the summer weather. when last the thunder and the lightning broke, shatt'ring themselves upon it at one stroke, the silence has not stirred, there in the heather. all round about stand steeples straight as stakes, and each its bell between its fingers shakes; all round about, with their three-storied loads, the teams prowl down the roads; all round about, where'er the pine woods end, the wheel creaks on along its rutty bed, but not a sound is strong enough to rend that space intense and dead. since summer, thunder-laden, last was heard. the silence has not stirred; and the broad heath-land, where the nights sink down beyond the sand-hills brown. beyond the endless thickets closely set, to the far borders of the far-away. prolongs it yet. even the winds disturb not as they go the boughs of those long larches, bending low where the marsh-water lies, in which its vacant eyes gaze at themselves unceasing, stubbornly. only sometimes, as on their way they move, the noiseless shadows of the clouds above. or of some great bird's hov'ring flight on high, brush it in passing by. since the last bolt that scored the earth aslant, nothing has pierced the silence dominant. of those who cross its vast immensity, whether at twilight or at dawn it be, there is not one but feels the dread of the unknown that it instils; an ample force supreme, it holds its sway uninterruptedly the same for aye. dark walls of blackest fir-trees bar from sight the outlook towards the paths of hope and light; huge, pensive junipers affright from far the passing travellers; long, narrow paths stretch their straight lines unbent. till they fork off in curves malevolent; and the sun, ever shifting, ceaseless lends fresh aspects to the mirage whither tends bewilderment since the last bolt was forged amid the storm, the polar silence at the corners four of the wide heather-land has stirred no more. old shepherds, whom their hundred years have worn to things all dislocate and out of gear, and their old dogs, ragged, tired-out, and torn. oft watch it, on the soundless lowlands near, or downs of gold beflecked with shadows' flight, sit down immensely there beside the night. then, at the curves and corners of the mere. the waters creep with fear; the heather veils itself, grows wan and white; all the leaves listen upon all the bushes, and the incendiary sunset hushes before its face his cries of brandished light. and in the hamlets that about it lie. beneath the thatches of their hovels small the terror dwells of feeling it is nigh. and, though it stirs not, dominating all. broken with dull despair and helplessness, beneath its presence they crouch motionless, as though upon the watch--and dread to see. through rifts of vapour, open suddenly at evening, in the moon, the argent eyes of its mute mysteries. the bell-ringer yon, in the depths of the evening's track, like a herd of blind bullocks that seek their fellows, wild, as in terror, the tempest bellows. and suddenly, there, o'er the gables black that the church, in the twilight, around it raises all scored with lightnings the steeple blazes. see the old bell-ringer, frenzied with fear. mouth gaping, yet speechless, draw hastening near. and the knell of alarm that with strokes of lead he rings, heaves forth in a tempest of dread the frantic despair that throbs in his head. with the cross at the height of its summit brandished, the lofty steeple spreads the crimson mane of the fire o'er the plain toward the dream-like horizons that bound the night; the city nocturnal is filled with light; the face of the swift-gathered crowds doth people with fears and with clamours both street and lane; on walls turned suddenly dazzling bright the dusky panes drink the crimson flood like draughts of blood. yet, knell upon knell, the old ringer doth cast his frenzy and fear o'er the country vast. the steeple, it seems to be growing higher against the horizon that shifts and quivers, and to be flying in gleams of fire far o'er the lakes and the swampy rivers. its slates, like wings of sparks and spangles, afar it flings. they fly toward the forests across the night: and in their passage the fires exhume the hovels and huts from their folds of gloom, setting them suddenly all alight. in the crashing fall of the steeple's crown the cross to the brazier's depth drops down, where, twisted and torn in the fiery fray, its christian arms are crushed like prey. with might and main the bell-ringer sounds his knell abroad. as though the flames would burn his god. the fire funnel-like hollows its way yet higher, 'twixt walls of stone, up the steeple's height; gaining the archway and lofty stage where, swinging in light, the bell bounds with rage. the daws and the owls, with wild, long cry pass screeching by; on the fast-closed casements their heads they smite, burn in the smoke-drifts their pinions light, then, broken with terror and bruised with flight. suddenly, 'mid the surging crowd. fall dead outright. the old man sees toward his brandished bells the climbing fire with hands of boiling gold stretch nigher. the steeple looks like a thicket of crimson bushes, with here a branch of flame that rushes darting the belfry boards between; convulsed and savage flames, they cling, with curves that plant-like curl and lean. round every joist, round every pulley, and monumental beams, whence ring the bells, that voice forth frenzied folly. his fear and anguish spent, the ringer sounds his own knell on his ruined bell. a final crash, all dust and plaster in one grey flash, cleaves the whole steeple's height in pieces; and like some great cry slain, it ceases all on a sudden, the knell's dull rage. the ancient tower seems sudden to lean and darkly lower; while with heavy thuds, as from stage to stage they headlong bound. the bells are heard plunging and crashing towards the ground. but yet the old ringer has never stirred. and, scooping the moist earth out, the bell was thus his coffin, and grave as well. the snow uninterruptedly falls the snow, like meagre, long wool-strands, scant and slow, o'er the meagre, long plain disconsolate. cold with lovelessness, warm with hate. infinite, infinite falls the snow. like a moment's time. monotonously, in a moment's time; on the houses it falls and drops, the snow. monotonous, whitening them o'er with rime; it falls on the sheds and their palings below. and myriad-wise, it falls and lies in ridgèd waves in the churchyard hollows between the graves. the apron of all inclement weather is roughly unfastened, there on high; the apron of woes and misery is shaken by wind-gusts violently down on the hamlets that crouch together beneath the dull horizon-sky. the frost creeps down to the very bones, and want creeps in through the walls and stones; yea, snow and want round the souls creep close, --the heavy snow diaphanous-round the stone-cold hearths and the flameless souls that wither away in their huts and holes. the hamlets bare white, white as death lie yonder, where the crookèd roadways cross and halt; like branching traceries of salt the trees, all crystallized with frost, stretch forth their boughs, entwined and crost. along the ways, as on they go in far procession o'er the snow. then here and there, some ancient mill, where light, pale mosses aggregate, appears on a sudden, standing straight like a snare upon its lonely hill. the roofs and sheds, down there below. since november dawned, have been wrestling still, in contrary blasts, with the hurricane; while, thick and full, yet falls amain the infinite snow, with its weary weight, o'er the meagre, long plain disconsolate. thus journeys the snow afar so fleet. into every cranny, on every trail; always the snow and its winding-sheet, the mortuary snow so pale. the snow, unfruitful and so pale. in wild and vagabond tatters hurled through the limitless winter of the world. the grave-digger in the garden yonder of yews and death, there sojourneth a man who toils, and has toiled for aye. digging the dried-up ground all day. some willows, surviving their own dead selves. weep there around him as he delves. and a few poor flowers, disconsolate because the tempest and wind and wet vex them with ceaseless scourge and fret. the ground is nothing but pits and cones, deep graves in every corner yawn; the frost in the winter cracks the stones, and when the summer in june is born one hears, 'mid the silence that pants for breath, the germinating and life of death below, among the lifeless bones. since ages longer than he can know, the grave-digger brings his human woe, that never wears out, and lays its head slowly down in that earthy bed. by all the surrounding roads, each day they come towards him, the coffins white, they come in processions infinite; they come from the distances far away. from corners obscure and out-of-the-way. from the heart of the towns--and the wide-spreading plain. the limitless plain, swallows up their track; they come with their escort of people in black. at every hour, till the day doth wane; and at early dawn the long trains forlorn begin again. the grave-digger hears far off the knell, beneath weary skies, of the passing bell, since ages longer than he can tell. some grief of his each coffin carrieth-his wild desires toward evenings dark with death are here: his mournings for he knows not what: here are his tears, for ever on this spot motionless in their shrouds: his memories. with gaze worn-out from travelling through the years so far, to bid him call to mind the fears of which their souls are dying--and with these lies side by side the shattered body of his broken pride. his heroism, to which nought replied, is here all unavailing; his courage, 'neath its heavy armour failing. and his poor valour, gashed upon the brow. silent, and crumbling in corruption now. the grave-digger watches them come into sight, the long, slow roads. marching towards him, with all their loads of coffins white. here are his keenest thoughts, that one by one his lukewarm soul hath tainted and undone; and his white loves of simple days of yore, in lewd and tempting mirrors sullied o'er; the proud, mute vows that to himself he made are here--for he hath scored and cancelled them, as one may cut and notch a diadem; and here, inert and prone, his will is laid, whose gestures flashed like lightning keen before. but that he now can raise in strength no more. the grave-digger digs to the sound of the knell 'mid the yews and the deaths in yonder dell. since ages longer than he can tell. here is his dream--born in the radiant glow. of joy and young oblivion, long ago-that in black fields of science he let go, that he hath clothed with flame and embers bright, --red wings plucked off from folly in her flight-that he hath launched toward inaccessible spaces afar, toward the distance there, the golden conquest of the impossible, and that the limitless, refractory sky, sends back to him again, or it has ere so much as touched the immobile mystery. the grave-digger turneth it round and round-with arms by toil so weary made, with arms so thin, and strokes of spade-since what long times?--the dried-up ground. here, for his anguish and remorse, there throng pardons denied to creatures in the wrong; and here, the tears, the prayers, the silent cries, he would not list to in his brothers' eyes. the insults to the gentle, and the jeer what time the humble bent their knees, are here; gloomy denials, and a bitter store of arid sarcasms, oft poured out before devotedness that in the shadow stands with outstretched hands. the grave-digger, weary, yet eager as well. hiding his pain to the sound of the knell, with strokes of the spade turns round and round the weary sods of the dried-up ground. then--fear-struck dallyings with suicide; delays, that conquer hours that would decide: again--the terrors of dark crime and sin furtively felt with frenzied fingers thin: the fierce craze and the fervent rage to be the man who lives of the extremity of his own fear: and then, too, doubt immense and wild affright. and madness, with its eyes of marble white, these all are here. his head a prey to the dull knell's sound, in terror the grave-digger turns the ground with strokes of the spade, and doth ceaseless cast the dried-up earth upon his past. the slain days, and the present, he doth see, quelling each quivering thrill of life to be. and drop by drop, through fists whose fingers start. pressing the future blood of his red heart; chewing with teeth that grind and crush, each part of that his future's body, limb by limb, till there is but a carcase left to him; and shewing him, in coffins prisoned, or ever they be born, his longings dead. the grave-digger yonder doth hear the knell, more heavy yet, of the passing bell. that up through the mourning horizons doth swell what if the bells, with their haunting swing, would stop on a day that heart-breaking ring! and the endless procession of corse after corse. choke the highways no more of his long remorse but the biers, with the prayers and the tears, immensely yet follow the biers; they halt by crucifix now, and by shrine, then take up once more their mournful line; on the backs of men, upon trestles borne. they follow their uniform march forlorn; skirting each field and each garden-wall. passing beneath the sign-posts tall, skirting along by the vast unknown, where terror points horns from the corner-stone. the old man, broken and propless quite. watches them still from the infinite coming towards him--and hath beside nothing to do, but in earth to hide his multiple death, thus bit by bit, and, with fingers irresolute, plant on it crosses so hastily, day by day, since what long times--he cannot say. the wind crossing the infinite length of the moorland, here comes the wind, the wind with his trumpet that heralds november; endless and infinite, crossing the downs, here comes the wind that teareth himself and doth fiercely dismember; which heavy breaths turbulent smiting the towns, the savage wind comes, the fierce wind of november! each bucket of iron at the wells of the farmyards, each bucket and pulley, it creaks and it wails; by cisterns of farmyards, the pulleys and pails they creak and they cry, the whole of sad death in their melancholy. the wind, it sends scudding dead leaves from the birches along o'er the water, the wind of november, the savage, fierce wind; the boughs of the trees for the birds' nests it searches, to bite them and grind. the wind, as though rasping down iron, grates past, and, furious and fast, from afar combs the cold and white avalanches of winter the old. the savage wind combs them so furious and fast. the wind of november. from each miserable shed the patched garret-windows wave wild overhead their foolish, poor tatters of paper and glass. as the savage, fierce wind of november doth pass! and there on its hill of dingy and dun-coloured turf, the black mill, swift up from below, through the empty air slashing, swift down from above, like a lightning-stroke flashing, the black mill so sinister moweth the wind. the savage, fierce wind of november! the old, ragged thatches that squat round their steeple, are raised on their roof-poles, and fall with a clap, in the wind the old thatches and pent-houses flap, in the wind of november, so savage and hard. the crosses--and they are the arms of dead people-the crosses that stand in the narrow churchyard fall prone on the sod like some great flight of black, in the acre of god. the wind of november! have you met him, the savage wind, do you remember? did he pass you so fleet, --where, yon at the cross, the three hundred roads meet-with distressfulness panting, and wailing with cold? yea, he who breeds fears and puts all things to flight, did you see him, that night when the moon he o'erthrew--when the villages, old in their rot and decay, past endurance and spent, cried, wailing like beasts, 'neath the hurricane bent? here comes the wind howling, that heralds dark weather, the wind blowing infinite over the heather. the wind with his trumpet that heralds november! the fishermen the spot is flaked with mist, that fills, thickening into rolls more dank, the thresholds and the window-sills, and smokes on every bank. the river stagnates, pestilent with carrion by the current sent this way and that--and yonder lies the moon, just like a woman dead, that they have smothered overhead, deep in the skies. in a few boats alone there gleam lamps that light up and magnify the backs, bent over stubbornly, of the old fishers of the stream, who since last evening, steadily, --for god knows what night-fishery-have let their black nets downward slow into the silent water go. the noisome water there below. down in the river's deeps, ill-fate and black mischances breed and hatch. unseen of them, and lie in wait as for their prey. and these they catch with weary toil--believing still that simple, honest work is best-at night, beneath the shifting mist unkind and chill. so hard and harsh, yon clock-towers tell. with muffled hammers, like a knell, the midnight hour. from tower to tower so hard and harsh the midnights chime. the midnights harsh of autumn time, the weary midnights' bell. the crew of fishers black have on their back nought save a nameless rag or two; and their old hats distil withal, and drop by drop let crumbling fall into their necks, the mist-flakes all. the hamlets and their wretched huts are numb and drowsy, and all round the willows too, and walnut trees, 'gainst which the easterly fierce breeze has waged its feud. no bayings from the forest sound, no cry the empty midnight cuts-the midnight space that grows imbrued with damp breaths from the ashy ground. the fishers hail each other not-nor help--in their fraternal lot; doing but that which must be done. each fishes for himself alone. and this one gathers in his net, drawing it tighter yet, his freight of petty misery; and that one drags up recklessly diseases from their slimy bed; while others still their meshes spread out to the sorrows that drift by threateningly nigh; and the last hauls aboard with force the wreckage dark of his remorse. the river, round its corners bending, and with the dyke-heads intertwined. goes hence--since what times out of mind?-toward the far horizon wending of weariness unending. upon the banks, the skins of wet black ooze-heaps nightly poison sweat. and the mists are their fleeces light that curl up to the houses' height. in their dark boats, where nothing stirs, not even the red-flamed torch that blurs with halos huge, as if of blood. the thick felt of the mist's white hood, death with his silence seals the sere old fishermen of madness here. the isolated, they abide deep in the mist--still side by side. but seeing one another never; weary are both their arms--and yet their work their ruin doth beget. each for himself works desperately, he knows not why--no dreams has he; long have they worked, for long, long years, while every instant brings its fears; nor have they ever quitted the borders of their river, where 'mid the moonlit mists they strain to fish misfortune up amain. if but in this their night they hailed each other and brothers' voices might console a brother! but numb and sullen, on they go, with heavy brows and backs bent low, while their small lights beside them gleam, flickering feebly on the stream. like blocks of shadow they are there. nor ever do their eyes divine that far away beyond the mists acrid and spongy--there exists a firmament where 'mid the night. attractive as a loadstone, bright prodigious planets shine. the fishers black of that black plague, they are the lost immeasurably, among the knells, the distance vague, the yonder of those endless plains that stretch more far than eye can see: and the damp autumn midnight rains into their souls' monotony. the rope-maker in his village grey at foot of the dykes, that encompass him with weary weaving of curves and lines toward the sea outstretching dim, the rope-maker, visionary white. stepping backwards along the way, prudently 'twixt his hands combines the distant threads, in their twisting play. that come to him from the infinite. when day is gone. through ardent, weary evenings, yon the whirr of a wheel can yet be heard; something by unseen hands is stirred. and parallel o'er the rakes, that trace an even space from point to point along all the way, the flaxen hemp still plaits its chain ceaseless, for days and weeks amain. with his poor, tired fingers, nimble still. fearing to break for want of skill the fragments of gold that the gliding light threads through his toil so scantily-passing the walls and the houses by the rope-maker, visionary white, from depths of the evening's whirlpool dim, draws the horizons in to him. horizons that stretch back afar. where strife, regrets, hates, furies are: tears of the silence, and the tears that find a voice: serenest years, or years convulsed with pang and throe: horizons of the long ago, these gestures of the past they shew. of old--as one in sleep, life, errant, strayed its wondrous morns and fabled evenings through; when god's right hand toward far canaan's blue traced golden paths, deep in the twilight shade. of old, 'twas life exasperate, huge and tense, swung savage at some stallion's mane--life, fleet. with mighty lightnings flashing 'neath her feet, upreared immensely over space immense. of old, 'twas life evoking ardent will; and hell's red cross and heaven's cross of white each marched, with gleam of steely armours' light. through streams of blood, to heavens of victory still. of old--life, livid, foaming, came and went 'mid strokes of tocsin and assassin's knife; proscribers, murderers, each with each at strife, while, mad and splendid. death above them bent. 'twixt fields of flax and of osiers red. on the road where nothing doth move or tread, by houses and walls to left and right the rope-maker, visionary white, from depths of evening's treasury dim draws the horizons in to him. horizons that stretch yonder far. where work, strifes, ardours, science are; horizons that change--they pass and glide, and on their way they shew in mirrors of eventide the mourning image of dark to-day. here--writhing fires that never rest nor end. where, in one giant effort all employed, sages cast down the gods, to change the void whither the flights of human science tend. here--'tis a room where thought, assertive, saith that there are weights exact to gauge her by, that inane ether, only, rounds the sky. and that in phials of glass men breed up death. here--'tis a workship, where, all fiery bright, matter intense vibrates with fierce turmoil in vaults where wonders new, 'mid stress and toil, are forged, that can absorb space, time and night. --a palace--of an architecture grown effete, and weary 'neath its hundred years. whence voices vast invoke, instinct with fears, the thunder in its flights toward the unknown. on the silent, even road--his eyes still fixed towards the waning light that skirts the houses and walls as it dies-the rope-maker, visionary white, from depths of the evening's halo dim draws the horizons in to him. horizons that are there afar where light, hope, wakenings, strivings are; horizons that he sees defined as hope for some future, far and kind. beyond those distant shores and faint that evening on the clouds doth paint. yon--'mid that distance calm and musical twin stairs of gold suspend their steps of blue, the sage doth climb them, and the seer too, starting from sides opposed toward one goal. yon--contradiction's lightning-shocks lose power. doubt's sullen hand unclenches to the light, the eye sees in their essence laws unite rays scattered once 'mid doctrines of an hour. yon--keenest spirits pierce beyond the land of seeming and of death. the heart hath ease, and one would say that mildness held the keys of the colossal silence in her hand. up yon--the god each soul is, once again creates, expands, gives, finds himself in all; and rises higher, the lowlier he doth fall before meek tenderness and sacred pain. and there is ardent, living peace--its urns of even bliss ranged 'mid these twilights, where --embers of hope upon the ashen air-each great nocturnal planet steadfast burns. in his village at foot of the dykes, that bend, sinuous, weary, about him and wend toward that distance of eddying light, the rope-maker, visionary white. along by each house and each garden wall. absorbs in himself the horizons all. from "les heures claires" i oh, splendour of our joy and our delight, woven of gold amid the silken air! see the dear house among its gables light, and the green garden, and the orchard there! here is the bench with apple-trees o'er head whence the light spring is shed. with touch of petals falling slow and soft; here branches luminous take flight aloft, hovering, like some bounteous presage, high against this landscape's clear and tender sky. here lie, like kisses from the lips dropt down of yon frail azur upon earth below, two simple, pure, blue pools, and like a crown about their edge, chance flowers artless grow. o splendour of our joy and of our ourselves! whose life doth feed, within this garden bright, upon the emblems of our own delight. what are those forms that yonder slowly pass? our two glad souls are they, that pastime take, and stray along the terraces and woodland grass? are these thy breasts, are these thine eyes, these two golden-bright flowers of harmonious hue? these grasses, hanging like some plumage rare. bathed in the stream they ruffle by their touch. are they the strands of thy smooth, glossy hair? no shelter e'er could match yon orchard white. or yonder house amid its gables light, and garden, that so blest a sky controls, weaving the climate dear to both our souls. viii as in the guileless, golden age, my heart i gave thee, even like an ample flower that opens in the dew's bright morning hour; my lips have rested where the frail leaves part. i plucked the flower--it came from meadows whereon grow the flowers of flame: speak to it not--'tis best that we control words, since they needs are trivial 'twixt us two; all words are hazardous, for it is through the eyes that soul doth hearken unto soul. that flower that is my heart, and where secure my heart's avowal hides. simply confides unto thy lips that she is clear and pure. loyal and good--and that one's trust toward a virgin love is like a child's in god. let wit and wisdom flower upon the height, along capricious paths of vanity; and give we welcome to sincerity, that holds between her fingers crystal-bright our two clear hearts: for what so beautiful as a confession made from soul to soul. when eve returns and the white flame of countless diamonds burns. like myriads of silent eyes intent, th' unfathomed silence of the firmament. xvii. that we may love each other through our eyes let us our glances lave, and make them clear, of all the thousand glances that they here have met, in this base world of servile lies. the dawn is dressed in blossom and in dew, and chequered too with very tender light--it looks as though frail plumes of sun and silver, through the mist, glided across the garden to and fro, and with a soft caress the mosses kissed. our wondrous ponds of blue tremble and wake with golden shimmerings; swift emerald flights beneath the trees dart through. and now the light from hedge and path anew sweeps the damp dust, where yet the twilight clings. xxi. in hours like these, when through our dream of bliss so far from all things not ourselves we move, what lustral blood, what baptism is this that bathes our hearts, straining toward perfect love? our hands are clasped, and yet there is no prayer, our arms outstretched, and yet no cry is there; adoring something, what, we cannot say. more pure than we are and more far away, with spirit fervent and most guileless grown, how we are mingled and dissolved in one; ah, how we live each other, in the unknown! oh, how absorbed and wholly lost before the presence of those hours supreme one lies! and how the soul would fain find other skies to seek therein new gods it might adore; oh, marvellous and agonizing joy, audacious hope whereon the spirit hangs, of being one day once more the prey, beyond even death, of these deep, silent pangs. from "les apparus dans mes chemins" st. george opening the mists on a sudden through, an avenue! then, all one ferment of varied gold, with foam of plumes where the chamfrom bends round his horse's head, that no bit doth hold, st. george descends! the diamond-rayed caparison, makes of his flight one declining path from heaven's pity down upon our waiting earth. hero and lord of the joyous, helpful virtues all. sonorous, pure and crystalline! let his radiance fall on my heart nocturnal and make it shine in the wheeling aureole of his sword! let the wind's soft silvern whispers sound and ring his coat of mail around, his battle-spurs amid the fight! --he--the st. george--who shines so bright and comes, 'mid the wailings of my desire. to seize and lift my poor hands higher toward his dauntless valour's fire! like a cry great with faith, to god his lance st. george upraised doth hold; crossing athwart my glance he trod. as 'twere one tumult of haggard gold. the chrism's glow on his forehead shone, the great st. george of duty high! beautiful by his heart, and by himself alone! ring, all my voices of hope, ring on! ring forth in me beneath fresh boughs of greenery, down radiant pathways, full of sun; ye glints of silvery mica, be bright joy amid my stones--and ye white pebbles that the waters strew. open your eyes in my brooklets, through the watery lids that cover you; landscape of gushing springs and sun, with gold that quivers on misty blue, landscape that dwells in me, hold thou the mirror now to the fiery flights, that flaming roll, of the great st. george toward my soul! 'gainst the black dragon's teeth and claws, against the armour of leprous sores, the miracle and sword is he; on his breast-plate burneth charity, and his gentleness sends hurtling back. in dire defeat, the instinct black. fires flecked with gold, that flashing turn, whirlwinds of stars, those glories meet, about his galloping horse's feet. deep into my remembrance burn their lightnings fleet! he comes, a fair ambassador, from white lands built with marble o'er. where grows, in glades beside the sea, upon the tree of goodness, fragrant gentleness. that haven, too, he knows no less where wondrous ships rock, calm and still. that freights of sleeping angels fill; and those vast evenings, when below upon the water, 'mid the skies' reflected eyes. islands flash sudden forth and glow. that kingdom fair whereof the virgin ariseth queen, its lowly, ardent joy is he; and his flaming sword in the ambient air vibrates like an ostensory-the suddenly flashing st. george! behold, he strikes through my soul like a fire of gold! he knows from what far wanderings i come: what mists obscure my brain; what dagger marks have deeply scarred my thought, and with black crosses marred: with what spent force, what anger vain. what petty scorn of better things, --yea, and with what a mask i came, folly upon the lees of shame! a coward was i; the world i fled to hide my head within a huge and futile me; i builded, beneath domes of night, the blocks of marble, gold be-starred, of a hostile science, endlessly towards a height by oracles of blackness barred. for death alone is queen of night. and human effort is brightest born only at dawn. with opening flowers would prayer fain bloom, and their sweet lips hold the same perfume. the sunbeams shimmering white that fall on pearly water, are for all like a caress upon our life: the dawn unfolds a counsel fair of trustfulness; and whoso hearkens thereto is saved from his slough, where never a sin was laved. st. george in radiant armour came speeding along in leaps of flame 'mid the sweet morning, through my soul. young, beautiful by faith was he; he leaned the lower down toward me even as i the lowlier knelt; like some pure, golden cordial in secret felt. he filled me with his soaring strength, and with sweet fear most tenderly. before that vision's dignity, into his pale, proud hand at length i cast the blood my pain had spent. then, laying upon me as he went a charge of valour, and the sign of the cross on my brow from his lance divine, he sped upon his shining road straight, with my heart, towards his god. the gardens the landscape now reveals a change; a stair--that twinèd elm-boughs hold enclosed 'mid hedges mystic, strange-inaugurates a green and gold vision of gardens, range on range. each step's a hope, that doth ascend stairwise to expectation's height; a weary way it is to wend while noonday suns are burning bright. but rest waits at the evening's end. streams, that wash white from sin, flow deep, and round about the fresh lawns twine; while there, beneath the green banks steep, beside his cross, the lamb divine lies tranquilly in peaceful sleep. the daisied grass is glad, and gay with crystal butterflies the hedge. where globes of fruit shine blue; here stray peacocks beside the box-trees' edge: a shining lion bars the way. flowers, upright as the ecstasies and ardours of white spirits pure, with branches springing fountain-wise, burst upward, and by impulse sure to their own soaring splendour rise. gently and very slowly swayed. the wind a wordless rhapsody sings--and the shimm'ring air doth braid an aureole of filigree round every disk with emerald laid. even the shade is but a flight toward flickering radiances, that slip from space to space; and now the light sleeps, with calmed rays, upon the lip of lilac-blossoms golden-white. she of the garden in such a spot, with radiant flowers for halo, i saw the guardian angel sit her down; vine-branches fashioned a green shrine above her and sun-flowers rose behind her like a crown. her fingers, their white slenderness encircled with humble, fragile rings of coral round. held, ranged in couples, sprays of faithful roses. sealed with a clasp, with threads of woollen bound. a shimmering air the golden calm was weaving, all filigree'd with dawn, that like a braid surmounted her pure brow, which still was hidden half in the shade. woven of linen were her veil and sandals. but, twined 'mid boughs of foliage, on their hem the theologic virtues three were painted; hearts set about with gold encompassed them. her silken hair, slow rippling, from her shoulder down to the mosses of the sward did reach; the childhood of her eyes disclosed a silence more sweet than speech. my arms outstretched, and all my soul upstraining. then did i rise, with haggard yearning, toward the soul suspended there in her eyes. those eyes, they shone so vivid with remembrance, that they confessed days lived alike with me: oh, in the grave inviolate can it change, then, the long ago, and live in the to be? sure, she was one who, being dead, yet brought me. miraculous, a strength that comforteth, and the viaticum of her survival guiding me from the further side of death. from "la multiple splendeur" the glory of the heavens shining in dim transparence, the whole of infinity lies behind the veil that the finger of radiant winter weaves and down on us falls the foliage of stars in glittering sheaves; from out the depths of the forest, the forest obscure of the skies, the wingèd sea with her shadowy floods as of dappled silk speeds, 'neath the golden fires, her pale immensity o'er; and diamond-rayed, the moonlight, shining along the shore, bathes the brow of the headlands in radiance as soft as milk. yonder there flow, untwining and twining their loops anew! the mighty, silvery rivers, through the translucent night; and a glint as of wondrous acids sparkles with magic light the cup that the lake outstretches towards the mountains blue. everywhere light seems breaking forth into flower and star, whether on shore in stillness, or wavering on the deep. the islands are nests where silence inviolate doth deep; an ardent nimbus hovers o'er yon horizons far. see, from nadir to zenith one aureole doth reach! of yore, the souls exalted by faith's high mysteries saw, in the domination of those star-clouded skies, jehovah's hand resplendent and heard his silent speech. but now the eyes that scan them no longer may there aspire to we some god self-banished--not so, but the intricate tangle of marvellous problems, the messengers that wait on measureless force, and veil her, there on her couch of fire. o cauldrons of life, where matter, adown the eternal day, pours herself fruitful, seething through paths of scattering flame! o flux of worlds and reflux to other worlds the same! unending oscillation betwixt newer and for aye! tumults consumed in whirlpools of speed and sound and light-violence we nought may reck of!--and yet there falls from thence the vast, unbroken silence, mysterious and intense that makes the peace, the calmness and beauty of the night! o spheres of flame and golden, always more far and high; abyss to abyss still floating, onward from shade to shade! so far, so high, all reck'ning the wisdom of man has made, before those giddy numbers must shrink in his hands and die! shining in dim transparence, the whole of infinity lies behind the veils that the finger of radiant winter weaves; and down on us falls the foliage of star in glittering sheaves, from out the depths of the forest, the forest obscure of the skies. life to see beauty in all, is to lift our own soul up to loftier heights than do chose who aspire through culpable suffering, vanquished desire. harsh reality, dread and ineffable whole, distils her red draught, enough tonic and stern to intoxicate heads and to make the heart burn. o clean and pure grain, whence are purged all the tares! clear torch, chosen out amid many whose flame; though ancient in splendour, is false to its name! it is good to keep step, though beset with hard cares, with the life that is real, to the far distant goal, with no arm save the lucid, white pride of one's soul! to march, thus intrepid in confidence, straight on the obstacle, holding the stubborn hope of conquering, thanks to firm blows of the will, of intelligence prompt, or of patience to wait; and to feel growing stronger within us the sense, day by day, of a power superb and intense! to love ourselves keenly those others within who share a like strife with us, soar without fear toward that one future, whose footsteps we hear; to love them, heart, brain, and because we are kin because in some dark, maddened day they have known one anguish, one mourning, one string with our own! to be drunk with the great human battle of wills---pale, fleeting reflex of the monstrous assaults, golden movements of planets in heaven's high vaults-till one lives in all that which acts, struggles, and thrills, and avidly opens one's heart to the law that rules, dread and stern, the whole universe o'er! joy o splendid, spacious day, irradiate with flaming dawns, when earth shows yet more fair her ardent beauty, proud, without alloy; and wakening life breathes out her perfume rare so potently, that, all intoxicate, our ravished being rushes upon joy! be thanked, mine eyes, that now ye still shine clear beneath my furrowed brow to see afar, the light vibrating there; and you my hands, that in the sun yet thrill, and you, my fingers, that glow golden still among the golden fruit upon the wall where hollyhocks stand tall. be thanked, my body, that thyself dost bear yet firm and swift, and quivering to the touch of the quick breezes or of winds profound; and you, straight frame, and lungs outbreathing wide, along the shore or on the mountain-side, the sharp and radiant air that bathes and grips the mighty worlds around! o festal mornings, calm in loveliness, rose whose pure face the dewdrops all caress, birds flying toward us, like some presage white, gardens of sombre shade or frailest light! what time the ample summer warms the glade, i love you, roads, by which came hither late she who held hidden in her hands my fate. i love you, distant marshes, woods austere, and to its depths, i love the earth, where here beneath my feet, my dead to rest are laid. so i exist in all that doth surround and penetrate me:--all this grassy ground, these hidden paths, and many a copse of beech: clear water, that no clouding shadows reach: you have become to me myself, because you are my memory. in you my life prolonged for ever seems, i shape, i am, all that hath filled my dreams; in that horizon vast that dazzles me, trees shimmering with gold, my pride are ye; and like the knots upon your trunk, my will strengthens my power to sane, stanch labour still. rose of the pearl-hued gardens, when you kiss my brow, a touch of living flame it is; to me all seems one thrill of ardour, beauty, wild caress; and i, in this world-drunkenness, so multiply myself in all that gleams on dazzled eyes, that my heart, fainting, vents itself in cries. o leaps of fervour, strong, profound, and sweet, as though some great wing swept thee off thy feet! if thou hast felt them upward hearing thee toward infinity, complain not, man, even in the evil day; whate'er disaster takes thee for her prey thou to thyself shalt say that once, for one short instant all supreme which time may not destroy, thou yet hast tasted, with quick-beating heart, sweet, formidable joy; and that thy soul, beguiling thee to set as in a dream, hath fused thy very being's inmost part with the unanimous great founts of power and that that day supreme, that single hour, hath made a god of thee. the love poems of emile verhaeren translated by f. s. flint london constable and company ltd. 1916 a celle qui vit a mes côtés contents the shining hours i. o the splendour of our joy ii. although we saw this bright garden iii. this barbaric capital, whereon monsters writhe iv. the sky has unfolded into night v. each hour i brood upon your goodness vi. sometimes you wear the kindly grace vii. oh! let the passing hand viii. as in the simple ages ix. young and kindly spring x. come with slow steps xi. how readily delight is aroused in her xii. at the time when i had long suffered xiii. and what matters the wherefores xiv. in my dreams, i sometimes pair you xv. i dedicate to your tears xvi. i drown my entire soul in your two eyes xvii. to love with our eyes xviii. in the garden of our love xix. may your bright eyes, your eyes of summer xx. tell me, my simple and tranquil sweetheart xxi. during those hours wherein we are lost xxii. oh! this happiness, sometimes so rare xxiii. let us, in our love and ardour xxiv. so soon as our lips touch xxv. to prevent the escape of any part of us xxvi. although autumn this evening xxvii. the gift of the body when the soul is given xxviii. was there in us one fondness xxix. the lovely garden blossoming with flames xxx. if it should ever happen that the hours of afternoon i. step by step, day by day ii. roses of june, you the fairest iii. if other flowers adorn the house iv. the darkness is lustral v. i bring you this evening, as an offering vi. let us both sit down on the old worm-eaten bench vii. gently, more gently still viii. in the house chosen by our love ix. the pleasant task with the window open x. in the depth of our love dwells all faith xi. dawn, darkness, evening, space and the stars xii. this is the holy hour when the lamp is lit xiii. the dead kisses of departed years xiv. for fifteen years xv. i thought our joy benumbed for ever xvi. everything that lives about us xvii. because you came one day xviii. on days of fresh and tranquil health xix. out of the groves of sleep i came xx. alas! when the lead of illness xxi. our bright garden is health itself xxii. it was june in the garden xxiii. the gift of yourself xxiv. oh! the calm summer garden where nothing moves! xxv. as with others, an hour has its ill-humour xxvi. the golden barks of lovely summer xxvii. ardour of senses, ardour of hearts xxviii. the still beauty of summer evenings xxix. you said to me, one evening xxx. "hours of bright morning" the hours of evening i. dainty flowers, like a froth of foam ii. if it were true that a garden flower iii. the wistaria is faded and the hawthorn dead iv. draw up your chair near mine v. be once more merciful and cheering to us, light vi. alas! the days of the crimson phlox vii. the evening falls, the moon is golden viii. when your hand ix. and now that the lofty leaves have fallen x. when the starry sky covers our dwelling xi. with the same love that you were for me xii. the flowers of bright welcome xiii. when the fine snow with its sparkling grains xiv. if fate has saved us from commonplace errors xv. no, my heart has never tired of you xvi. how happy we are still xvii. shall we suffer, alas! the dead weight of the years xviii. the small happenings, the thousand nothings xix. come even to our threshold xx. when our bright garden was gay xxi. with my old hands lifted to your forehead xxii. if our hearts have burned xxiii. in this rugged winter xxiv. perhaps, when my last day comes xxv. oh! how gentle are your hands xxvi. when you have closed my eyes to the light the shining hours i o the splendour of our joy, woven of gold in the silken air! here is our pleasant house and its airy gables, and the garden and the orchard. here is the bench beneath the apple-trees, whence the white spring is shed in slow, caressing petals. here flights of luminous wood-pigeons, like harbingers, soar in the clear sky of the countryside. here, kisses fallen upon earth from the mouth of the frail azure, are two blue ponds, simple and pure, artlessly bordered with involuntary flowers. o the splendour of our joy and of ourselves in this garden where we live upon our emblems. ii although we saw this bright garden, wherein we pass silently, flower before our eyes, it is rather in us that grows the pleasantest and fairest garden in the world. for we live all the flowers, all the plants and all the grasses in our laughter and our tears of pure and calm happiness. for we live all the transparencies of the blue pond that reflects the rich growths of the golden roses and the great vermilion lilies, sun-lips and mouths. for we live all joy, thrown out in the cries of festival and spring of our avowals, wherein heartfelt and uplifting words sing side by side. oh! is it not indeed in us that grows the pleasantest and the gladdest garden in the world? iii this barbaric capital, whereon monsters writhe, soldered together by the might of claw and tooth, in a mad whirl of blood, of fiery cries, of wounds, and of jaws that bite and bite again, this was myself before you were mine, you who are new and old, and who, from the depths of your eternity, came to me with passion and kindness in your hands. i feel the same deep, deep things sleeping in you as in me, and our thirst for remembrance drink up the echo in which our pasts answer each to each. our eyes must have wept at the same hours, without our knowing, during childhood, have had the same terrors, the same happinesses, the same flashes of trust; for i am bound to you by the unknown that watched me of old down the avenues through which my adventurous life passed; and, indeed, if i had looked more closely, i might have seen, long ago, within its eyes your own eyes open. iv the sky has unfolded into night, and the moon seems to watch over the sleeping silence. all is so pure and clear; all is so pure and so pale in the air and on the lakes of the friendly countryside, that there is anguish in the fall from a reed of a drop of water, that tinkles and then is silent in the water. but i have your hands between mine and your steadfast eyes that hold me so gently with their earnestness; and i feel that you are so much at peace with everything that nothing, not even a fleeting suspicion of fear, will overcast, be it but for a moment, the holy trust that sleeps in us as an infant rests. v each hour i brood upon your goodness, so simple in its depth, i lose myself in prayers to you. i came so late towards the gentleness of your eyes, and from so far towards your two hands stretched out quietly over the wide spaces. i had in me so much stubborn rust that gnawed my confidence with its ravenous teeth. i was so heavy, was so tired, i was so old with misgiving. i was so heavy, i was so tired of the vain road of all my footsteps. i deserved so little the wondrous joy of seeing your feet illuminate my path that i am still trembling and almost in tears, and humble, for ever and ever, before my happiness. vi sometimes you wear the kindly grace of the garden in early morning that, quiet and winding, unfolds in the blue distances its pleasant paths, curved like the necks of swans. and, at other times, you are for me the bright thrill of the swift, exalting wind that passes with its lightning fingers through the watery mane of the white pond. at the good touch of your two hands, i feel as though leaves were caressing me lightly; and, when midday burns the garden, the shadows at once gather up the dear words with which your being trembled. thus, thanks to you, each moment seems to pass in me divinely; so, at the hour of wan night, when you hide within yourself, shutting your eyes, you feel my gentle, devout gaze, humbler and longer than a prayer, thank yours beneath your closed eyelids. vii oh! let the passing hand knock with its futile fingers on the door; our hour is so unique, and the rest--what matters the rest with its futile fingers? let dismal, tiresome joy keep to the road and pass on with its rattles in its hand. let laughter swell and clatter and die away; let the crowd pass with its thousands of voices. the moment is so lovely with light in the garden about us; the moment is so rare with virgin light in our heart deep down in us. everything tells us to expect nothing more from that which comes or passes, with tired songs and weary arms, on the roads, and to remain the meek who bless the day, even when night is before us barricaded with darkness, loving in ourselves above all else the idea that, gently, we conceive of our love. viii as in the simple ages, i have given you my heart, like a wide-spreading flower that opens pure and lovely in the dewy hours; within its moist petals my lips have rested. the flower, i gathered it with fingers of flame; say nothing to it: for all words are perilous; it is through the eyes that soul listens to soul. the flower that is my heart and my avowal confides in all simplicity to your lips that it is loyal, bright and good, and that we trust in virgin love as a child trusts in god. leave wit to flower on the hills in freakish paths of vanity; and let us give a simple welcome to the sincerity that holds our two true hearts within its crystalline hands; nothing is so lovely as a confession of souls one to the other, in the evening, when the flame of the uncountable diamonds burns like so many silent eyes the silence of the firmaments. ix young and kindly spring who clothes our garden with beauty makes lucid our voices and words, and steeps them in his limpidity. the breeze and the lips of the leaves babble, and slowly shed in us the syllables of their brightness. but the best in us turns away and flees material words; a mute and mild and simple rapture, better than all speech, moors our happiness to its true heaven: the rapture of your soul, kneeling in all simplicity before mine, and of my soul, kneeling in gentleness before yours. x come with slow steps and sit near the gardenbed, whose flowers of tranquil light are shut by evening; let the great night filter through you: we are too happy for our prayer to be disturbed by its sea of dread. above, the pure crystal of the stars is lit up; behold the firmament clearer and more translucent than a blue pond or the stained-glass window in an apse; and then behold heaven that gazes through. the thousand voices of the vast mystery speak around you; the thousand laws of all nature are in movement about you; the silver bows of the invisible take your soul and its fervour for target, but you are not afraid, oh! simple heart, you are not afraid, since your faith is that the whole earth works in harmony with that love that brought forth in you life and its mystery. clasp then your hands tranquilly, and adore gently; a great counsel of purity floats like a strange dawn beneath the midnights of the firmament. xi how readily delight is aroused in her, with her eyes of fiery ecstasy, she who is gentle and resigned before life in so simple a fashion. this evening, how a look surprised her fervour and a word transported her to the pure garden of gladness, where she was at once both queen and servant. humble of herself, but aglow with our two selves, she vied with me in kneeling to gather the wondrous happiness that overflowed mutually from our hearts. we listened to the dying down in us of the violence of the exalting love imprisoned in our arms, and to the living silence that said words we did not know. xii at the time when i had long suffered and the hours were snares to me, you appeared to me as the welcoming light that shines from the windows on to the snow in the depths of winter evenings. the brightness of your hospitable soul touched my heart lightly without wounding it, like a hand of tranquil warmth. then came a holy trust, and an open heart, and affection, and the union at last of our two loving hands, one evening of clear understanding and of gentle calm. since then, although summer has followed frost both in ourselves and beneath the sky whose eternal flames deck with gold all the paths of our thoughts; and although our love has become an immense flower, springing from proud desire, that ever begins anew within our heart, to grow yet better; i still look back on the small light that was sweet to me, the first. xiii and what matters the wherefores and the reasons, and who we were and who we are; all doubt is dead in this garden of blossoms that opens up in us and about us, so far from men. i do not argue, and do not desire to know, and nothing will disturb what is but mystery and gentle raptures and involuntary fervour and tranquil soaring towards our heaven of hope. i feel your brightness before understanding that you are so; and it is my gladness, infinitely, to perceive myself thus gently loving without asking why your voice calls me. let us be simple and good--and day be minister of light and affection to us; and let them say that life is not made for a love like ours. xiv in my dreams, i sometimes pair you with those queens who slowly descend the golden, flowered stairways of legend; i give you names that are married with beauty, splendour and gladness, and that rustle in silken syllables along verses built as a platform for the dance of words and their stately pageantries. but how quickly i tire of the game, seeing you gentle and wise, and so little like those whose attitudes men embellish. your brow, so shining and pure and white with certitude, your gentle, childlike hands peaceful upon your knees, your breasts rising and falling with the rhythm of your pulse that beats like your immense, ingenuous heart, oh! how everything, except that and your prayer, oh! how everything is poor and empty, except the light that gazes at me and welcomes me in your naked eyes. xv i dedicate to your tears, to your smile, my gentlest thoughts, those i tell you, those also that remain undefined and too deep to tell. i dedicate to your tears, to your smile, to your whole soul, my soul, with its tears and its smiles and its kiss. see, the dawn whitens the ground that is the colour of lees of wine; shadowy bonds seem to slip and glide away with melancholy; the water of the ponds grows bright and sifts its noise; the grass glitters and the flowers open, and the golden woods free themselves from the night. oh! what if we could one day enter thus into the full light; oh, what if we could one day, with conquering cries and lofty prayers, with no more veils upon us and no more remorse in us, oh! what if we could one day enter together into lucid love. xvi i drown my entire soul in your two eyes, and the mad rapture of that frenzied soul, so that, having been steeped in their gentleness and prayer, it may be returned to me brighter and of truer temper. o for a union that refines the being, as two golden windows in the same apse cross their differently lucent fires and interpenetrate! i am sometimes so heavy, so weary of being one who cannot be perfect, as he would! my heart struggles with its desires, my heart whose evil weeds, between the rocks of stubbornness, rear slyly their inky or burning flowers; my heart, so false, so true, as the day may be, my contradictory heart, my heart ever exaggerated with immense joy or with criminal fear. xvii to love with our eyes, let us lave our gaze of the gaze of those whose glances we have crossed, by thousands, in life that is evil and enthralled. the dawn is of flowers and dew and the mildest sifted light; soft plumes of silver and sun seem through the mists to brush and caress the mosses in the garden. our blue and marvellous ponds quiver and come to life with shimmering gold; emerald wings pass under the trees; and the brightness sweeps from the roads, the garths and the hedges the damp ashen fog in which the twilight still lingers. xviii in the garden of our love, summer still goes on: yonder, a golden peacock crosses an avenue; petals--pearls, emeralds, turquoises --deck the uniform slumber of the green swards. our blue ponds shimmer, covered with the white kiss of the snowy water-lilies; in the quincunxes, our currant bushes follow one another in procession; an iridescent insect teases the heart of a flower; the marvellous undergrowths are veined with gleams; and, like light bubbles, a thousand bees quiver along the arbours over the silver grapes. the air is so lovely that it seems rainbow-hued; beneath the deep and radiant noons, it stirs as if it were roses of light; while, in the distance, the customary roads, like slow movements stretching their vermilion to the pearly horizon, climb towards the sun. indeed, the diamonded gown of this fine summer clothes no other garden with so pure a brightness. and the unique joy sprung up in our two hearts discovers its own life in these clusters of flames. xix may your bright eyes, your eyes of summer, be for me here on earth the images of goodness. let our enkindled souls clothe with gold each flame of our thoughts. may my two hands against your heart be for you here on earth the emblems of gentleness. let us live like two frenzied prayers straining at all hours one towards the other. may our kisses on our enraptured mouths be for us here on earth the symbols of our life. xx tell me, my simple and tranquil sweetheart, tell me how much an absence, even of a day, saddens and stirs up love, and reawakens it in all its sleeping scalds? i go to meet those who are returning from the wondrous distances to which at dawn you went; i sit beneath a tree at a bend of the path, and, on the road, watching their coming, i gaze and gaze earnestly at their eyes still bright with having seen you. and i would kiss their fingers that have touched you, and cry out to them words they would not understand; and i listen a long while to the rhythm of their steps towards the shadow where the old evenings hold night prone. xxi during those hours wherein we are lost so far from all that is not ourselves, what lustral blood or what baptism bathes our hearts that strain towards all love? clasping our hands without praying, stretching out our arms without crying aloud, but with earnest and ingenuous mind worshipping something farther off and purer than ourselves, we know not what, how we blend with, how we live our lives in, the unknown. how overwhelmed we are in the presence of those hours of supreme existence; how the soul desires heavens in which to seek for new gods. oh! the torturing and wondrous joy and the daring hope of being one day, across death itself, the prey of these silent terrors. xxii oh! this happiness, sometimes so rare and frail that it frightens us! in vain we hush our voices, and make of all your hair a tent to shelter us; often the anguish in our hearts flows over. but our love, being like a kneeling angel, begs and supplicates that the future give to others than ourselves a like affection and life, so that their fate may not be envious of ours. and, too, on evil days, when the great evenings extend to heaven the bounds of despair, we ask forgiveness of the night that kindles with the gentleness of our heart. xxiii let us, in our love and ardour, let us live so boldly our finest thoughts that they interweave in harmony with the supreme ecstasy and perfect fervour. because in our kindred souls something more holy than we and purer and greater awakens, let us clasp hands to worship it through ourselves. it matters not that we have only cries or tears to define it humbly, and that its charm is so rare and powerful that, in the enjoyment of it, our hearts are nigh to failing us. even so, let us remain, and for ever, the mad devotees of this almost implacable love, and the kneeling worshippers of the sudden god who reigns in us, so violent and so ardently gentle that he hurts and overwhelms us. xxiv so soon as our lips touch, we feel so much more luminous together that it would seem as though two gods loved and united in us. we feel our hearts to be so divinely fresh and so renewed by their virgin light that, in their brightness, the universe is made manifest to us. in our eyes, joy is the only ferment of the world that ripens and becomes fruitful innumerably on our roads here below; as in clusters spring up among the silken lakes on which sails travel the myriad blossoms of the stars above. order dazzles us as fire embers, everything bathes us in its light and appears a torch to us: our simple words have a sense so lovely that we repeat them to hear them without end. we are the sublime conquerors who vanquish eternity without pride and without a thought of trifling time: and our love seems to us always to have been. xxv to prevent the escape of any part of us from our embrace that is so intense as to be holy, and to let love shine clear through the body itself, we go down together to the garden of the flesh. your breasts are there like offerings and your two hands are stretched out to me; and nothing is of so much worth as the simple provender of words said and heard. the shadow of the white boughs travels over your neck and face, and your hair unloosens its bloom in garlands on the swards. the night is all of blue silver; the night is a lovely silent bed--gentle night whose breezes, one by one, will strip the great lilies erect in the moonlight. xxvi although autumn this evening along the paths and the woods' edges lets the leaves fall slowly like gilded hands; although autumn this evening with its arms of wind harvests the petals and their pallor of the earnest rose-trees; we shall let nothing of our two souls fall suddenly with these flowers. but before the flames of the golden hearth of memory, we will both crouch and warm our hands and knees. to guard against the sorrows hidden in the future, against time that makes an end of all ardour, against our terror and even against ourselves, we will both crouch near the hearth that our memory has lit up in us. and if autumn involves the woods, the lawns and the ponds in great banks of shadow and soaring storms, at least its pain shall not disturb the inner quiet garden where the equal footsteps of our thoughts walk together in the light. xxvii the gift of the body when the soul is given is but the accomplishment of two affections drawn headlong one towards the other. you are only happy in your body that is so lovely in its native freshness because in all fervour you may offer it to me wholly as a total alms. and i give myself to you knowing nothing except that i am greater by knowing you, who are ever better and perhaps purer since your gentle body offered its festival to mine. love, oh! let it be for us the sole discernment and the sole reason of our heart, for us whose most frenzied happiness is to be frenzied in our trust. xxviii was there in us one fondness, one thought, one gladness, one promise that we had not sown before our footsteps? was there a prayer heard in secret whose hands stretched out gently over our bosom we had not clasped? was there one appeal, one purpose, one tranquil or violent desire whose pace we had not quickened? and each loving the other thus, our hearts went out as apostles to the gentle, timid and chilled hearts of others; and by the power of thought invited them to feel akin to ours, and, with frank ardours, to proclaim love, as a host of flowers loves the same branch that suspends and bathes it in the sun. and our soul, as though made greater in this awakening, began to celebrate all that loves, magnifying love for love's sake, and to cherish divinely, with a wild desire, the whole world that is summed up in us. xxix the lovely garden blossoming with flames that seemed to us the double or the mirror of the bright garden we carried in our hearts is crystallized in frost and gold this evening. a great white silence has descended and sits yonder on the marble horizons, towards which march the trees in files, with their blue, immense and regular shadow beside them. no puff of wind, no breath. alone, the great veils of cold spread from plain to plain over the silver marshes or crossing roads. the stars appear to live. the hoar-frost shines like steel through the translucent, frozen air. bright powdered metals seem to snow down, in the infinite distances, from the pallor of a copper moon. everything sparkles in the stillness. and it is the divine hour when the mind is haunted by the thousand glances that are cast upon earth by kind and pure and unchangeable eternity towards the hazards of human wretchedness. xxx if it should ever happen that, without our knowledge, we became a pain or torment or despair one to the other; if it should come about that weariness or hackneyed pleasure unbent in us the golden bow of lofty desire; if the crystal of pure thought must fall in our hearts and break; if, in spite of all, i should feel myself vanquished because i had not bowed my will sufficiently to the divine immensity of goodness; then, oh! then let us embrace like two sublime madmen who beneath the broken skies cling to the summits even so--and with one flight and soul ablaze grow greater in death. the hours of afternoon i step by step, day by day, age has come and placed his hands upon the bare forehead of our love, and has looked upon it with his dimmer eyes. and in the fair garden shrivelled by july, the flowers, the groves and the living leaves have let fall something of their fervid strength on to the pale pond and the gentle paths. here and there, the sun, harsh and envious, marks a hard shadow around his light. and yet the hollyhocks still persist in their growth towards their final splendour, and the seasons weigh upon our life in vain; more than ever, all the roots of our two hearts plunge unsatiated into happiness, and clutch, and sink deeper. oh! these hours of afternoon girt with roses that twine around time, and rest against his benumbed flanks with cheeks aflower and aflame! and nothing, nothing is better than to feel thus, still happy and serene, after how many years? but if our destiny had been quite different, and we had both been called upon to suffer--even then!--oh! i should have been happy to live and die, without complaining, in my stubborn love. ii roses of june, you the fairest with your hearts transfixed by the sun; violent and tranquil roses, like a delicate flock of birds settled on the branches; roses of june and july, upright and new, mouths and kisses that suddenly move or grow still with the coming and going of the wind, caress of shadow and gold on the restless garden; roses of mute ardour and gentle will, roses of voluptuousness in your mossy sheaths, you who spend the days of high summer loving each other in the brightness; fresh, glowing, magnificent roses, all our roses, oh! that, like you, our manifold desires, in our dear weariness or trembling pleasure, might love and exalt each other and rest! iii if other flowers adorn the house and the splendour of the countryside, the pure ponds shine still in the grass with the great eyes of water of their mobile face. who can say from what far-off and unknown distances so many new birds have come with sun on their wings? in the garden, april has given way to july, and the blue tints to the great carnation tints; space is warm and the wind frail; a thousand insects glisten joyously in the air; and summer passes in her robe of diamonds and sparks. iv the darkness is lustral and the dawn iridescent. from the lofty branch whence a bird flies, the dew-drops fall. a lucid and frail purity adorns a morning so bright that prisms seem to gleam in the air. a spring babbles; a noise of wings is heard. oh! how beautiful are your eyes at that first hour when our silver ponds shimmer in the light and reflect the day that is rising. your forehead is radiant and your blood beats. intense and wholesome life in all its divine strength enters your bosom so completely, like a driving happiness, that to contain its anguish and its fury, your hands suddenly take mine, and press them almost fearfully against your heart. v i bring you this evening, as an offering, my joy at having plunged my body into the silk and gold of the frank and joyous wind and the gorgeous sun; my feet are bright with having walked among the grasses; my hands sweet with having touched the heart of flowers; my eyes shining at having felt the tears suddenly well up and spring into them before the earth in festival and its eternal strength. space has carried me away drunken and fervent and sobbing in its arms of moving brightness; and i have passed i know not where, far away in the distance, with pent-up cries set free by my footsteps. i bring you life and the beauty of the plains breathe them on me in a good, frank breath; the marjoram has caressed my fingers, and the air and its light and its perfumes are in my flesh. vi let us both sit down on the old worm-eaten bench near the path; and let my hand remain a long while within your two steadfast hands. with my hand that remains a long while given up to the sweet consciousness of being on your knees, my heart also, my earnest, gentle heart, seems to rest between your two kind hands. and we share an intense joy and a deep love to feel that we are so happy together, without one over-strong word to come trembling to our lips, or one kiss even to go burning towards your brow. and we would prolong the ardour of this silence and the stillness of our mute desires, were it not that suddenly, feeling them quiver, i clasp tightly, without willing it, your thinking hands; your hands in which my whole happiness is hidden, and which would never, for anything in the world, deal violently with those deep things we live by, although in duty we do not speak of them. vii gently, more gently still, cradle my head in your arms, my fevered brow and my weary eyes; gently, more gently still, kiss my lips, and say to me those words that are sweeter at each dawn when your voice repeats them, and you have surrendered, and i love you still. the day rises sullen and heavy; the night was crossed by monstrous dreams; the rain and its long hair whip our casement, and the horizon is black with clouds of grief. gently, more gently still, cradle my head in your arms, my fevered brow and my weary eyes; you are my hopeful dawn, with its caress in your hands and its light in your sweet words; see, i am re-born, without pain or shock, to the daily labour that traces its mark on my road, and instils into my life the will to be a weapon of strength and beauty in the golden grasp of an honoured life. viii in the house chosen by our love as its birth-place, with its cherished furniture peopling the shadows and the nooks, where we live together, having as sole witnesses the roses that watch us through the windows, certain days stand out of so great a consolation, certain hours of summer so lovely in their silence, that sometimes i stop time that swings with its golden disc in the oaken clock. then the hour, the day, the night is so much ours that the happiness that hovers lightly over us hears nothing but the throbbing of your heart and mine that are brought close together by a sudden embrace. ix the pleasant task with the window open and the shadow of the green leaves and the passage of the sun on the ruddy paper, maintains the gentle violence of its silence in our good and pensive house. and the flowers bend nimbly and the large fruits shine from branch to branch, and the blackbirds, the bullfinches and the chaffinches sing and sing, so that my verses may burst forth clear and fresh, pure and true, like their songs, their golden flesh and their scarlet petals. and i see you pass in the garden, sometimes mingled with the sun and shadow; but your head does not turn, so that the hour in which i work jealousy at these frank and gentle poems may not be disturbed. x in the depth of our love dwells all faith; we bind up a glowing thought together with the least things: the awakening of a bud, the decline of a rose, the flight of a frail and beautiful bird that, by turns, appears or disappears in the shadow or the light. a nest falling to pieces on the mossy edge of a roof and ravaged by the wind fills the mind with dread. an insect eating the heart of the hollyhocks terrifies: all is fear, all is hope. though reason with its sharp and soothing snow may suddenly cool these charming pangs, what matters! let us accept them without inquiring overmuch into the false, the true, the evil or the good they portend; let us be happy that we can be as children, believing in their fatal or triumphant power, and let us guard with closed shutters against too sensible people. xi dawn, darkness, evening, space and the stars; that which the night conceals or shows between its veils is mingled with the fervour of our exalted being. those who live with love live with eternity. it matters not that their reason approve or scoff, and, upright on its high walls, hold out to them, along the quays and harbours, its bright torches; they are the travellers from beyond the sea. far off, farther than the ocean and its black floods, they watch the day break from shore to shore; fixed certainty and trembling hope present the same front to their ardent gaze. happy and serene, they believe eagerly; their soul is the deep and sudden brightness with which they burn the summit of the loftiest problems; and to know the world, they but scrutinize themselves. they follow distant roads chosen by themselves, living with the truths enclosed within their simple, naked eyes, that are deep and gentle as the dawn; and for them alone there is still song in paradise. xii this is the holy hour when the lamp is lit: everything is calm and comforting this evening; and the silence is such that you could hear the falling of feathers. this is the holy hour when gently the beloved comes, like the breeze or smoke, most gently, most slowly. at first, she says nothing--and i listen; and i catch a glimpse of her soul, that i hear wholly, shining and bursting forth; and i kiss her on the eyes. this is the holy hour when the lamp is lit, when the acknowledgment of mutual love the whole day long is brought forth from the depths of our deep but transparent heart. and we each tell the other of the simplest things: the fruit gathered in the garden, the flower that has opened between the green mosses; and the thought that has sprung from some sudden emotion at the memory of a faded word of affection found at the bottom of an old drawer on a letter of yesteryear. xiii the dead kisses of departed years have put their seal on your face, and, beneath the melancholy and furrowing wind of age, many of the roses in your features have faded. i see your mouth and your great eyes glow no more like a morning of festival, nor your head slowly recline in the black and massive garden of your hair. your dear hands, that remain so gentle, approach no more as in former years with light at their finger-tips to caress my forehead, as dawn the mosses. your young and lovely body that i adorned with my thoughts has no longer the pure freshness of dew, and your arms are no longer like the bright branches. alas! everything falls and fades ceaselessly; everything has changed, even your voice; your body has collapsed like a pavise, and let fall the victories of youth. but nevertheless my steadfast and earnest heart says to you: what are to me the years made heavier day by day, since i know that nothing in the world will disturb our exalted life, and that our soul is too profound for love still to depend on beauty? xiv for fifteen years our thoughts have run together, and our fine and serene ardour has vanquished habit, the dull-voiced shrew whose slow, rough hands wear out the most stubborn and the strongest love. i look at you and i discover you each day, so intimate is your gentleness or your pride: time indeed obscures the eyes of your beauty, but it exalts your heart, whose golden depths peep open. artlessly, you allow yourself to be probed and known, and your soul always appears fresh and new; with gleaming masts, like an eager caravel, our happiness covers the seas of our desires. it is in us alone that we anchor our faith, to naked sincerity and simple goodness; we move and live in the brightness of a joyous and translucent trust. your strength is to be infinitely pure and frail; to cross with burning heart all dark roads, and to have preserved, in spite of mist or darkness, all the rays of the dawn in your childlike soul. xv i thought our joy benumbed for ever, like a sun faded before it was night, on the day that illness with its leaden arms dragged me heavily towards its chair of weariness. the flowers and the garden were fear or deception to me; my eyes suffered to see the white noons flaming, and my two hands, my hands, seemed, before their time, too tired to hold captive our trembling happiness. my desires had become no more than evil weeds; they bit at each other like thistles in the wind; i felt my heart to be at once ice and burning coal and of a sudden dried up and stubborn in forgiveness. but you said the word that gently comforts, seeking it nowhere else than in your immense love; and i lived with the fire of your word, and at night warmed myself at it until the dawn of day. the diminished man i felt myself to be, both to myself and all others, did not exist for you; you gathered flowers for me from the window-sill, and, with your faith, i believed in health. and you brought to me, in the folds of your gown, the keen air, the wind of the fields and forests, and the perfumes of evening or the scents of dawn, and, in your fresh and deep-felt kisses, the sun. xvi everything that lives about us in the fragile and gentle light, frail grasses, tender branches, hollyhocks, and the shadow that brushes them lightly by, and the wind that knots them, and the singing and hopping birds that swarm riotously in the sun like clusters of jewels,-everything that lives in the fine ruddy garden loves us artlessly, and we--we love everything. we worship the lilies we see growing; and the tall sunflowers, brighter than the nadir- circles surrounded by petals of flames--burn our souls through their glow. the simplest flowers, the phlox and the lilac, grow along the walls among the feverfew, to be nearer to our footsteps; and the involuntary weeds in the turf over which we have passed open their eyes wet with dew. and we live thus with the flowers and the grass, simple and pure, glowing and exalted, lost in our love, like the sheaves in the gold of the corn, and proudly allowing the imperious summer to pierce our bodies, our hearts and our two wills with its full brightness. xvii because you came one day so simply along the paths of devotion and took my life into your beneficent hands, i love and praise and thank you with my senses, with my heart and brain, with my whole being stretched like a torch towards your unquenchable goodness and charity. since that day, i know what love, pure and bright as the dew, falls from you on to my calmed soul. i feel myself yours by all the burning ties that attach flames to their fire; all my body, all my soul mounts towards you with tireless ardour; i never cease to brood on your deep earnestness and your charm, so much so that suddenly i feel my eyes fill deliciously with unforgettable tears. and i make towards you, happy and calm, with the proud desire to be for ever the most steadfast of joys to you. all our affection flames about us; every echo of my being responds to your call; the hour is unique and sanctified with ecstasy, and my fingers are tremulous at the mere touching of your forehead, as though they brushed the wing of your thoughts. xviii on days of fresh and tranquil health, when life is as fine as a conquest, the pleasant task sits down by my side like an honoured friend. he comes from gentle, radiant countries, with words brighter than the dews, in which to set, illuminating them, our feelings and our thoughts. he seizes our being in a mad whirlwind; he lifts up the mind on giant pilasters; he pours into it the fire that makes the stars live; he brings the gift of being god suddenly. and fevered transports and deep terrors-all serves his tragic will to make young again the blood of beauty in the veins of the world. i am at his mercy like a glowing prey. therefore, when i return, though wearied and heavy, to the repose of your love, with the fires of my vast and supreme idea, it seems to me--oh! but for a moment--that i am bringing to you in my panting heart the heart-beat of the universe itself. xix out of the groves of sleep i came, somewhat morose because i had left you beneath their branches and their braided shadows, far from the glad morning sun. already the phlox and the hollyhocks glisten, and i wander in the garden dreaming of verses clear as crystal and silver that would ring in the light. then abruptly i return to you with so great a fervour and emotion that it seems to me as though my thought suddenly has already crossed from afar the leafy and heavy darkness of sleep to call forth your joy and your awakening. and when i join you once more in our warm house that is still possessed by darkness and silence, my clear, frank kisses ring like a dawn-song in the valleys of your flesh. xx alas! when the lead of illness flowed in my benumbed veins with my heavy, sluggish blood, with my blood day by day heavier and more sluggish; when my eyes, my poor eyes, followed peevishly on my long, pale hands the fatal marks of insidious malady; when my skin dried up like bark, and i had no longer even strength enough to press my fiery lips against your heart, and there kiss our happiness; when sad and identical days morosely gnawed my life, i might never have found the will and the strength to hold out stoically, had you not, each hour of the so long weeks, poured into my daily body with your patient, gentle, placid hands the secret heroism that flowed in yours. xxi our bright garden is health itself. it is squandered in its brightness from the thousand hands of the branches and leaves as they wave to and fro. and the pleasant shade that welcomes our feet after the long roads pours into our tired limbs a quickening strength, gentle as the garden's mosses. when the pond plays with the wind and the sun, a ruddy heart seems to dwell in the depths of the water, and to beat, ardent and young, with the ripples; and the tall, straight gladioli and the glowing roses that move in their splendour hold out their golden goblets of red blood at the end of their living stalks. our bright garden is health itself. xxii it was june in the garden, our hour and our day, and our eyes looked upon all things with so great a love that the roses seemed to us to open gently, and to see and love us. the sky was purer than it had ever been: the insects and birds floated in the gold and gladness of an air as frail as silk, and our kisses were so exquisite that they gave an added beauty to the sunshine and the birds. it was as though our happiness had suddenly become azure, and required the whole sky wherein to shine; through gentle openings, all life entered our being, to expand it. and we were nothing but invocatory cries, and wild raptures, and vows and entreaties, and the need, suddenly, to recreate the gods, in order to believe. xxiii the gift of yourself no longer satisfies you; you are prodigal of yourself: the rapture that bears you on to ever greater love springs up in you ceaselessly and untiringly, and carries you ever higher towards the wide heaven of perfect love. a clasp of the hands, a gentle look impassions you; and your heart appears to me so suddenly lovely that i am afraid sometimes of your eyes and your lips, and that i am unworthy and that you love me too much. ah! these bright ardours of an affection too lofty for a poor human being who has only a poor heart, all moist with regrets, all thorny with faults, to feel their passing and dissolve in tears. xxiv oh! the calm summer garden where nothing moves! unless it be, near the middle of the bright and radiant pond, the goldfish like tongues of fire. they are our memories playing in our thoughts that are calm and stilled and limpid, like the trustful and restful water. and the water brightens and the fishes leap at the abrupt and marvellous sun, not far from the green irises and the white shells and stones, motionless about the ruddy edges. and it is sweet to watch them thus come and go in the freshness and splendour that touches them lightly, careless and without fear that they will bring from the depths to the surface other regrets than fleeting. xxv as with others, an hour has its ill-humour: the peevish hour or a malevolent humour has sometimes stamped our hearts with its black seals; and yet, in spite of all, even at the close of the darkest days, never have our hearts said the irrevocable words. a radiant and glowing sincerity was our joy and counsel, and our passionate soul found therein ever new strength, as in a ruddy flood. and we recounted each to the other our wretchedest woes, telling them like some harsh rosary, as we stood facing one another, with our love rising in sobs; and our two mouths, at each avowal, gently and in turn kissed our faults on the lips that uttered them aloud. thus, very simply, without baseness or bitter words, we escaped from the world and from ourselves, sparing ourselves all grief and gnawing cares, and watching the rebirth of our soul, as the purity of glass and gold of a window-pane is reborn after the rain, when the sun warms it and gently dries it. xxvi the golden barks of lovely summer that set out, riotous for space, are returning sad and weary from the blood-stained horizons. with monotonous strokes of the oars, they advance upon the waters; they are as cradles in which sleep autumn flowers. stalks of lilies with golden brows, you all lie overthrown; alone, the roses struggle to live beyond death. what matters to their full beauty that october shine or april: their simple and puerile desire drinks all light until the blood comes. even on the blackest days, when the sky dies, they strive towards christmas, beneath a harsh and haggard cloud, the moment the first ray darts through. you, our souls, do as they; they have not the pride of the lilies; but within their folds they guard a holy and immortal ardour. xxvii ardour of senses, ardour of hearts, ardour of souls, vain words created by those who diminish love; sun, you do not distinguish among your flames those of evening, of dawn, or of noon! you walk blinded by your own light in the torrid azure under the great arched skies, knowing nothing, unless it be that your strength is all-powerful and that your fire labours at the divine mysteries. for love is an act of ceaseless exaltation. o you whose gentleness bathes my proud heart, what need to weigh the pure gold of our dream? i love you altogether, with my whole being. xxviii the still beauty of summer evenings on the greenswards where they lie outspread holds out to us, without empty gesture or words, a symbol of rest in gladness. young morning and its tricks has gone away with the breezes; noon itself and the velvet skirts of its warm winds, of its heavy winds, no longer sweeps the torrid plain; and this is the hour when, without a branch's moving or a pond's ruffling its waters, the evening slowly comes from the tops of the mountains and takes its seat in the garden. o the infinite golden flatness of the waters, and the trees and their shadows on the reeds, and the calm and sumptuous silence in whose still presence we so greatly delight that we desire to live with it always or to die of it and revive by it, like two imperishable hearts tirelessly drunken with brightness. xxix you said to me, one evening, words so beautiful that doubtless the flowers that leaned towards us suddenly loved us, and one among them, in order to touch us both, fell upon our knees. you spoke to me of a time nigh at hand when our years like over-ripe fruit would be ready for the gathering, how the knell of destiny would ring out, and how we should love each other, feeling ourselves growing old. your voice enfolded me like a dear embrace, and your heart burned so quietly beautiful, that at that moment i could have seen without fear the beginning of the tortuous roads that lead to the tomb. xxx "hours of bright morning," "hours of afternoon," hours that stand out superbly and gently, whose dance lengthens along our warm garden-paths, saluted at passing by our golden rose-trees; summer is dying and autumn coming in. hours girt with blossom, will you ever return? yet, if destiny, that wields the stars, spares us its pains, its blows and its disasters, perhaps one day you will return, and, before my eyes, interweave in measure your radiant steps; and i will mingle with your glowing, gentle dance, winding in shade and sun over the lawns --like a last, immense and supreme hope--the steps and farewells of my "hours of evening." the hours of evening i dainty flowers, like a froth of foam, grew along the borders of our paths; the wind fell and the air seemed to brush your hands and hair with plumes. the shade was kindly to us as we walked in step beneath the leafage; a child's song reached us from a village, and filled all the infinite. our ponds were outspread in their autumn splendour under the guard of the long reeds, and the lofty, swaying crown on the woods' fine brow was mirrored in the waters. and both knowing that our hearts were brooding together on the same thought, we reflected that it was our calmed life that was revealed to us in this lovely evening. for one supreme moment, you saw the festival sky deck itself out and say farewell to us; and for a long, long while you gave it your eyes filled to the brim with mute caresses. ii if it were true that a garden flower or a meadow tree could keep some memory of lovers of other times who admired them in their bloom or their vigour, our love in this hour of long regret would come and entrust to the rose or erect in the oak, before the approach of death, its sweetness or its strength. thus it would survive, victor over funereal care, in the tranquil godship conferred on it by simple things; it would still enjoy the pure brightness cast on life by a summer dawn and the soft rain hanging to the leaves. and if on a fine evening, out of the depths of the plain, a couple came along, holding hands, the oak would stretch out its broad and powerful shade like a wing over their path, and the rose would waft them its frail perfume. iii the wistaria is faded and the hawthorn dead; but this is the season of the heather in flower, and on this calm and gentle evening the caressing wind brings you the perfumes of poor campine. love them and breathe them in while brooding over its fate; its soil is bare and harsh and the wind wars on it; pools make their holes in it; the sand preys on it, and the little left to it, it yet gives. once in autumn, we lived with it, with its plain and its woods, with its rain and its sky, even to december when the christmas angels crossed its legend with mighty strokes of their wings. your heart became more steadfast there, simpler and more human; we loved the people of its old villages, and the women who spoke to us of their great age and of spinning-wheels fallen from use, worn out by their hands. our calm house on the misty heath was bright to look upon and ready in its welcome; and dear to us were its roof and its door and its threshold and its hearth blackened by the smoky peat. when night spread out its total splendour over the vast and pale and innumerable somnolence, the silence taught us lessons, the glow of which our soul has never forgotten. because we felt more lonely in the vast plain, the dawns and the evenings sank more deeply into us; our eyes were franker, our hearts were gentler and filled to the brim with the fervour of the world. we found happiness by not asking for it; even the sadness of the days was good for us, and the few sun-rays of that end of autumn gladdened us all the more because they seemed weak and tired. the wistaria is faded and the hawthorn dead; but this is the season of the heather in flower. this evening, remember, and let the caressing wind bring you the perfumes of poor campine. iv draw up your chair near mine, and stretch your hands out towards the hearth that i may see between your fingers the old flame burning; and watch the fire quietly with your eyes that fear no light, that they may be for me still franker when a quick and flashing ray strikes to their depths, illuminating them. oh! how beautiful and young still our life is when the clock rings out with its golden tone, and, coming closer, i brush you lightly and touch you, and a slow and gentle fever that neither desires to allay leads the sure and wondrous kiss from the hands to the forehead and from the forehead to the lips. how i love you then, my bright beloved, in your welcoming, gently swooning body, that encircles me in its turn and dissolves me in its gladness! everything becomes dearer to me--your mouth, your arms, your kindly breasts where my poor, tired forehead will lie quietly near your heart after the moment of riotous pleasure that you grant me. for i love you still better after the sensual hour, when your goodness, still more steadfast and maternal, makes for me a soft repose, following sharp ardour, and when, after desire has cried out its violence, i hear approaching our regular happiness with steps so gentle that they are but silence. v be once more merciful and cheering to us, light, pale brightness of winter that will bathe our brows when of an afternoon we both go into the garden to breathe in one last warmth. we loved you long ago with so great a pride, with so great a love springing from our hearts, that one supreme and gentle and kindly flame is due to us at this hour when grief awaits us. you are that which no man ever forgets, from the day when you first struck his victorious arms, and when, on the coming of evening, you slept in his eyes with your dead splendour and vanquished strength. and for us you were always the visible fervour that, being everywhere diffused and shining in fevers of deep and stinging ardour, seemed to start for the infinite from our heart. vi alas! the days of the crimson phlox and of the proud roses that brightened its gates are far away, but however faded and withered it may be--what matters!--i love our garden still with all my heart. its distress is sometimes dearer and sweeter to me than was its gladness in the burning summer days. oh! the last perfume slowly rendered up by its last flower on its last mosses! i wandered this evening among its winding pathways, to touch with my earnest fingers all its plants; and falling on my knees amid the trembling grasses, i gave a long kiss to its damp and heavy soil. and now let it die, and the mist and night come and spread over all; all my being seems to have entered into our garden's ruin, and, by understanding its death, i shall learn to know my own. vii the evening falls, the moon is golden. before the day ends, go gaily into the garden and pluck with your gentle hands the few flowers that have not yet bowed sadly towards the earth. though their leaves may be wan, what matters! i admire them and you love them, and their petals are beautiful, in spite of all, on the stalks that bear them. and you went away into the distance among the box-trees, along a monotonous path, and the nosegay that you plucked trembled in your hand and suddenly quivered; and then your dreaming fingers devoutly gathered together these glimmering autumn roses and wove them with tears into a pale and bright and supple crown. the last light lit up your eyes, and your long step became sad and silent. and slowly in the twilight you returned with empty hands to the house, leaving not far from our door, on a damp, low hillock, the white circle that your fingers had formed. and i understood then that in the weary garden wherethrough the winds will soon pass like squadrons, you desired for the last time to adorn with flowers our youth that lies there dead. viii when your hand, on an evening of the sluggish months, commits to the odorous cupboards the fruits of your orchard, i seem to see you calmly arranging our old perfumed and sweet-tasting memories. and my relish for them returns, as it was in former years in the gold and the sun and with the wind on my lips; and then i see a thousand moments done and gone, and their gladness and their laughter and their cries and their fevers. the past reawakens with so great a desire to be the present still, with its life and strength, that the hardly extinguished fires suddenly burn my body, and my heart rejoices to the point of swooning. o beautiful luminous fruits in these autumn shadows, jewels fallen from the heavy necklace of russet summer, splendours that light up our monotonous hours, what a ruddy and spacious awakening you stir up in us! ix and now that the lofty leaves have fallen, that kept our garden sheltered beneath their shade, through the bare branches can be seen beyond them the roofs of the old villages climbing towards the horizon. so long as summer poured out its gladness, none of us saw them grouped so near our door; but now that the flowers and the leaves are withered, we often brood on them with gentle thoughts. other people live there between stone walls, behind a worn threshold protected by a coping, having as sole friends but the wind and the rain and the lamp shining with its friendly light. in the darkness at the fall of evening, when the fire awakens and the clock in which time swings is hushed, doubtless, as much as we, they love the silence, to feel themselves thinking through their eyes. nothing disturbs for them or for us those hours of deep and quiet and tender intimacy wherein the moment that was is blessed for having been, and of which the coming hour is always the best. indeed, how they also clench the old happiness, made up of pain and joy, within their trembling hands; they know each other's bodies that have grown old together, and each other's looks worn out by the same sorrows. the roses of their life, they love them faded, with their dead glory and their last perfume and the heavy memory of their dead brightness falling away, leaf by leaf, in the garden of the years. against black winter, like hermits, they stay crouching within their human fervour, and nothing disheartens them and nothing leads them to complain of the days they no longer possess. oh! the quiet people in the depths of old villages! indeed, do we not feel them neighbours of our heart! and do we not find in their eyes our tears and in their courage our strength and ardour! they are there beneath their roof, seated around fires, or lingering sometimes at their window-sill; and on this evening of spacious, floating wind, perhaps they have thought of us what we think of them. x when the starry sky covers our dwelling, we hush for hours before its intense and gentle fire, so that we may feel a greater and more fervent stirring within us. the great silver stars follow their courses high up in the heavens; beneath the flames and the gleams, night spreads out its depths, and the calm is so great that the ocean listens! but what matters even the hushing of the sea, if in the brightness and immensity of space, full of invisible violence, our hearts beat so strongly that they make all the silence? xi with the same love that you were for me long ago a garden of splendour whose wavering coppices shaded the long grass and the docile roses, you are for me in these black days a calm and steadfast sanctuary. all is centred there: your fervour and your brightness and your movements assembling the flowers of your goodness; but all is drawn together closely in a deep peace against the sharp winds piercing the winter of the world. my happiness keeps warm there within your folded arms; your pretty, artless words, in their gladness and familiarity, sing still with as great a charm to my ears as in the days of the white lilac or of the red currants. oh! i feel your gay and shining cheerfulness triumphing day by day over the sorrow of the years, and you yourself smile at the silver threads that slip their waving network into your glossy hair. when your head bends to my deep-felt kiss, what does it matter to me that your brow is furrowed, and that your hands are becoming ridged with hard veins when i hold them between my two steadfast hands! you never complain, and you believe firmly that nothing true dies when love receives its meed, and that the living fire on which our soul feeds consumes even grief to increase its flame. xii the flowers of bright welcome along the wall await us no longer when we go indoors, and our silken ponds whose smooth waters chafe lie outstretched no more beneath pure, soft skies. all the birds have fled our monotonous plains, and pallid fogs float over the marshes. o those two cries: autumn, winter! winter, autumn! do you hear the dead wood falling in the forest? no more is our garden the husband of light, whence the phlox were seen springing towards their glory; our fiery gladioli are mingled with the earth, and have lain down in their length to die. everything is nerveless and void of beauty; everything is flameless and passes and flees and bends and sinks down unsupported. oh! give me your eyes lit up by your soul that i may seek in them in spite of all a corner of the old sky. in them alone our light lives still, the light that covered all the garden long ago, when it exulted with the white pride of our lilies and the climbing ardour of our hollyhocks. xiii when the fine snow with its sparkling grains silts over our threshold, i hear your footsteps wander and stop in the neighbouring room. you withdraw the bright and fragile mirror from its place by the window, and your bunch of keys dances along the drawer of the beech-wood wardrobe. i listen, and you are poking the fire and arousing the embers; and you are arranging about the silent walls the silence of the chairs. you remove the fleeting dust from the workbasket with the narrow feet, and your ring strikes and resounds on the quivering sides of a wine-glass. and i am more happy than ever this evening at your tender presence, and at feeling you near and not seeing you and ever hearing you. xiv if fate has saved us from commonplace errors and from vile untruth and from sorry shams, it is because all constraint that might have bowed our double fervour revolted us. you went your way, free and frank and bright, mingling with the flowers of love the flowers of your will, and gently lifting up towards yourself its lofty spirit when my brow was bent towards fear or doubt. and you were always kind and artless in your acts, knowing that my heart was for ever yours; for if i loved--do i now know?--some other woman, it is to your heart that i always returned. your eyes were then so pure in their tears that my being was stirred to sincerity and truth; and i repeated to you holy and gentle words, and your weapons were sadness and forgiveness. and in the evening i lulled my head to sleep on your bright bosom, happy at having returned from false and dim distances to the fragrant spring that bore sway in us, and i remained a captive in your open arms. xv no, my heart has never tired of you. in the time of june, long ago, you said to me: "if i knew, friend, if i knew that my presence one day might be a burden to you-with my poor heart and sorrowful thoughts, i would go away, no matter where." and gently your forehead rose towards my kiss. and you said to me again: "bonds loosen always and life is so full, and what matters if the chain is golden that ties to the same ring in port our two human barks!" and gently your tears revealed to me your grief. and you said and you said again: "let us separate, let us separate before the evil days; our life has been too lofty to drag it trivially from fault to fault." and you fled and you fled, and my two hands desperately held you back. no, my heart has never tired of you. xvi how happy we are still and proud of living when the least ray of sunshine glimpsed in the heavens lights up for a moment the poor flowers of rime that the hard and delicate frost engraved on our window-panes. rapture leaps in us and hope carries us away, and our old garden appears to us again, in spite of its long paths strewn with dead branches, living and pure and bright and full of golden gleams. something shining and undaunted, i know not what, creeps into our blood; and in the quick kisses that, ardently, frantically, we give each other, we re-embody the immensity and fulness of summer. xvii shall we suffer, alas! the dead weight of the years until at length we are no more than two quiet people, exchanging the harmless kisses of children at evening when the fire flames in the hollow of the chimney? shall our dear furniture see us drag ourselves with slow steps from the hearth to the beechen chest, support ourselves by the wall to reach the window, and huddle our tottering bodies on heavy seats? if our wreck is to appear one day in such guise, while numbness deadens our brains and our arms, we shall not bemoan, in spite of evil fate, and we shall hold our tears pent up in our breasts. for even so, we shall still keep our eyes with which to gaze on the day that follows night, and to see the dawn and the sun shed their radiance on life, and make a wonderful object of the earth. xviii the small happenings, the thousand nothings, a letter, a date, a humble anniversary, a word said once again as in days long ago uplift your heart and mine in these long evenings. and we celebrate for ourselves these simple things, and we count and recount our old treasures, so that the little of us that we still keep may remain steadfast and brave before the sullen hour. and more than is fitting, we show ourselves solicitous of these poor, gentle, kindly joys that sit down on the bench near the flaming fire with winter flowers on their thin knees. and they take from the chest where their goodness hides it the bright bread of happiness that was allotted to us, and of which love in our house has so long eaten that he loves it even to the crumbs. xix come even to our threshold, scattering your white ash, o peaceful, slowly falling snow: the lime-tree in the garden holds all its branches bowed, and the light calandra dissolves in the sky no longer. o snow, who warm and protect the barely rising corn with the moss and wool that you spread from plain to plain! silent snow, the gentle friend of the houses asleep in the calm of morning: cover our roof and lightly touch our windows, and suddenly enter by the door over the threshold with your pure flakes and your dancing flames, o snow, luminous through our soul, snow, who also warm our last dreams like the rising corn! xx when our bright garden was gay with all its flowers, the regret at having shrunk our hearts sprang from our lips in moments of passion; and forgiveness, offered but deserved always, and the exaggerated display of our wretchedness and so many tears moistening our sad, sincere eyes uplifted our love. but in these months of heavy rain, when everything huddles together and makes itself small, when brightness itself tires of thrusting back shadow and night, our soul is no longer vibrant and strong enough to confess our faults with rapture. we tell them in slow speech; in truth, with affection still, but at the fall of the evening and no longer at dawn; sometimes even we count them on our ten fingers like things that we number and arrange in the house, and to lessen their folly or their number we debate them. xxi with my old hands lifted to your forehead, during your brief sleep by the black hearth this evening, i part your hair, and i kiss the fervour of your eyes hidden beneath your long lashes. oh! the sweet affection of this day's end! my eyes follow the years that have completed their course, and suddenly your life appears so perfect in them that my love is moved by a touching respect. and as in the time when you were my betrothed, the desire comes back to me again in all its ardour to fall on my knees, and with fingers as chaste as my thoughts to touch the place where your gentle heart beats. xxii if our hearts have burned in uplifting days with a love as bright as it was lofty, age now makes us slack and indulgent and mild before our faults. you no longer make us greater, o youthful will, with your unsubdued ardour, and our life is coloured now with gentle calm and pale kindliness. we are at the setting of your sun, love, and we mask our weakness with the common-place words and poor speeches of an empty, tardy wisdom. oh! how sad and shameful would the future be for us if from our winter and our mistiness there did not break out like a torch the memory of the high-spirited souls we once were. xxiii in this rugged winter when the floating sun founders on the horizon like a heavy wreck, i love to say your name, with its slow, solemn tone, as the clock echoes with the deep strokes of time. and the more i say it, the more ravished is my voice, so much so that from my lips it descends into my heart and awakens in me a more glowing happiness than the sweetest words i have spoken in my life. and before the new dawn or the evening falling to sleep, i repeat it with my voice that is ever the same, but oh! with what strength and supreme ardour shall i pronounce it at the hour of death! xxiv perhaps, when my last day comes, perhaps, if only for a moment, a frail and quavering sun will stoop down at my window. my hands then, my poor faded hands, will even so be gilded once again by his glory; he will touch my mouth and my forehead a last time with his slow, bright, deep kiss; and the pale, but still proud flowers of my eyes will return his light before they close. sun, have i not worshipped your strength and your brightness! my torrid, gentle art, in its supreme achievement has held you captive in the heart of my poems; like a field of ripe wheat that surges in the summer wind, this page and that of my books confers life on you and exhalts you: o sun, who bring forth and deliver, o immense friend of whom our pride has need, be it that at the new, solemn and imperious hour when my old human heart will be heavy under the proof, you will come once more to visit it and witness. xxv oh! how gentle are your hands and their slow caress winding about my neck and gliding over my body, when i tell you at the fall of evening how my strength grows heavy day by day with the lead of my weakness! you do not wish me to become a shadow and a wreck like those who go towards the darkness, even though they carry a laurel in their mournful hands and fame sleeping in their hollow chest. oh! how you soften the law of time for me, and how comforting and generous to me is your dream; for the first time, with an untruth you lull my heart, that forgives you and thanks you for it, well knowing, nevertheless, that all ardour is vain against all that is and all that must be, and that, by finishing in your eyes my fine human life, may perhaps be found a deep happiness. xxvi when you have closed my eyes to the light, kiss them with a long kiss, for they will have given you in the last look of their last fervour the utmost passionate love. beneath the still radiance of the funeral torch, bend down towards the farewell in them your sad and beautiful face, so that the only image they will keep in the tomb may be imprinted on them and may endure. and let me feel, before the coffin is nailed up, our hands meet once again on the pure, white bed, and your cheek rest one last time against my forehead on the pale cushions. and let me afterwards go far away with my heart, which will preserve so fiery a love for you that the other dead will feel its glow even through the compact, dead earth! (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page images generously made available by internet archive (http://www.archive.org) note: images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see http://www.archive.org/details/contemporarybelg00bithuoft contemporary belgian poetry selected and translated by jethro bithell m.a., lecturer in german at the birkbeck college, london. 1911 to émile verhaeren. _tout bouge--et l'on dirait les horizons en marche._ now let the dead past fall into the deep, with all its sleepy songs and churching chimes, you are the bell that gospels mightier times o'er men who scale the future's rugged steep, not looking back to where the weaklings creep, but, with for battle-song your iron rimes, marching front forwards to the visioned climes where hearts are steeled and furious forces sweep. of jewish idols and greek gods they sang, but louder than their voice hard anvils rang, and o'er their gardens smoke trailed waving hair; but while the old was ruined by the new, you pointed to a city far more fair; and, master, with glad hearts we follow you. contents. introduction sylvain bonmariage- autumn evening in the orchard you whom i love in silence thomas braun- the benediction of the nuptial ring the benediction of wine the benediction of the cheeses isi-collin- to the muse a dream jean dominique- thou whom the summer crosses, as a fawn the legend of saint ursula the soul's promise a secret max elskamp- of evening full of grace full of grace comforter of the afflicted comforter of the afflicted comforter of the afflicted comforter of the afflicted to the eyes to the mouth for the ear to-day is the day of rest, the sabbath mary, shed your hair and mary reads a gospel-page and whether in gray or in black cope andré fontainas- her voice cophetua desires adventure luxury sea-scape a propitious meeting the hours awake! life is calm frontispiece invitation to the pole paul gérardy- she evil love the owl of sad joy of autumn on the sea iwan gilkin- psychology the capital the penitent "et eritis sicut dii" vengeance the song of the forges hermaphrodite the days of yore valère gille- art thermopylæ a naval battle albert giraud- the tribunes cordovans florise hecate in the reign of the borgias absorption the youth among the lilies resignation voices victor kinon- the resurrection of dreams midnight hiding from the world the gust of wind the setting sun charles van lerberghe- errant sympathy the garden inclosed the temptation art thou waking? all of white and of gold the rain at sunset a barque of gold lilies that spin grégoire le roy- the spinster past roundel of old women hands my eyes my hands silences maurice maeterlinck the hothouse orison hot-house of weariness dark offering the heart's foliage soul lassitude tired wild beasts lustreless hours the hospital winter desires roundelay of weariness burning glass looks of eyes the soul in the night songs georges marlow- women in resignation souls of the evening albert mockel- the girl the song of running water the goblet the chandelier the angel the man with the lyre song of tears and laughter the eternal bride the bride of brides georges ramaekers- the thistle mushrooms georges rency- what use is speech? the source the flesh fernand séverin- the chaplet the lily of the valley sovran state the kiss of souls her sweet voice the refuge nature the humble hope eleonora d'este the thinker a sage they who are worn with love the centaur émile verhaeren- the old masters the cowherd the art of the flemings peasants fogs on the coast homage canticles dying men the arms of evening the mill in pious mood the ferryman the rain the fishermen silence the rope-maker saint george in the north the town the music-hall the butcher's stall a corner of the quay my heart is as it climbed a steep when i was as a man that hopeless pines lest anything escape from our embrace i bring to you as offering to-night in the cottage where our peaceful love reposes this is the good hour when the lamp is lit the sovran rhythm bibliography notes introduction. otto hauser refers the belgian renascence in art and literature to the influence of the pre-raphaelites. the influence of painting is at all events certain.[1] that of music is not less marked.[2] baudelaire has been continued by rodenbach, giraud, and gilkin. verlaine's method in _fêtes galantes_ is imitated in giraud's _héros et pierrots_ (fischbacher, paris). the naturalistic style of zola was independently initiated in belgium by camille lemonnier, who directly influenced verhaeren. but the most potent influence is that of mallarmé, whose symbolism has transformed contemporary poetry. it was a feature of the symbolists to return to the free metres and the simplicity of the folk-song; and there are echoes of popular poetry in the verse of braun, elskamp, gérardy, kinon, van lerberghe, and mockel. belgium is a country of mixed nationalities. the two languages spoken are flemish and french. flemish is a low german dialect, the written form of which is identical with dutch. practically all educated flemings speak french, which is the official language; the french belgians, who rarely know flemish,[3] are called walloons. only those authors who write in french are represented in the present volume, and they may be classed as follows: flemings:--elskamp (french mother), fontainas (french admixture), giraud, kinon (walloon admixture), van lerberghe, le roy, maeterlinck, ramaekers, verhaeren. walloons:--bonmariage (english mother), braun (german grandfather), isi-collin, jean dominique, gérardy (prussian walloon), gilkin (flemish mother), gille, marlow (english grandfather), mockel (distant german extraction), rency, séverin. the belgian poets are again divided into two very hostile camps with regard to metrical questions. the parnassians (the term is used for want of a better) cling to the traditional forms of french verse (what byron called "monotony in wire"), and to the time-honoured diction; whereas the _verslibristes_ use the free forms of verse imported into france from germany by jules laforgue, and perfected by (among others) the american vielé-griffin. it must be noted, however, that there is a tendency among the _verslibristes_ to return to the classical style: verhaeren, who wrote in _vers libres_ after his first two volumes, has, in his last book, _les rythmes souverains,_ approximated to the regular alexandrine. van lerberghe, in a letter written in 1905, condemns the _vers libre_; but his own work is an immortal monument of its practicability.[4] the chief parnassians are giraud, gilkin (whose _prométhée,_ however, is in _vers libres_), gille, and séverin, max elskamp is a _verslibriste_ only in his use of assonance. belgian literature begins, for all practical purposes, with charles de coster's national epic _uylenspiegel_. de coster died young, and was followed by the novelist camille lemonnier (1844-). then comes the flood-tide, not in literature only, for fernand khnopff, georges minnes, théo van rysselberghe (the bosom friend of verhaeren), and constantin meunier are as distinguished in painting and sculpture as, for instance, georges eekhoud and joris-karl huysmans are in the novel. the beginnings of the modern movement, which was directed, in the first instance, against philistinism, may be traced back to the group of bellicose students who were gathered together at the university of louvain about 1880.[5] some of them, among whom were émile verhaeren and ernest van dyk (the famous wagner tenor) founded a magazine, _la semaine des etudiants,_ which was soon suppressed by the university authorities. other students who later became famous were iwan gilkin and albert giraud; and edmond deman, who was to become verhaeren's publisher and a maker of beautiful books. another student, max waller, who, till his early death in 1889, was the imp of mischief in the literary world of belgium, founded, in rivalry with _la semaine,_ the magazine _le type_, which was also suppressed. later on max waller founded, in 1882, at brussels, together with georges eekhoud and gilkin, _la jeune belgique_, a review to which all the young bloods contributed, making common cause until they divided into _verslibristes_ and parnassians, after which the review was carried on, under the successive editorship of waller, gille, and gilkin, as the organ of the french party ("l'art pour l'art et le culte de la forme"[6]). other reviews which provided a battling-ground were _l'art moderne_[7] to which verhaeren contributed, and _la wallonie,_ which albert mockel founded at liège in 1884. the exuberant vitality of these students, though it often led them into extremes, laid the foundation of a literature which is in many respects the most remarkable of contemporary europe. now that tolstoy is dead, maeterlinck and verhaeren stand at the head of the literature of the whole world; and they are, as johannes schlaf has maintained, the perfect types of the "new european." it is absurd to consider them as frenchmen; they are as much the product of their country as ibsen is of norway. modern belgium, "between ardent france and grave germany," the focus of all the roads of europe, is as rich in intellectual gifts as it is teeming with material wealth. "the vitality of the belgians," says stefan zweig in his splendid book on verhaeren, "is magnificent. in no other part of europe is life lived with such intensity, such gaiety. in no other country as in flanders is excess in sensuality and pleasure a function of strength. the flemings must be seen in their sensual life, in the avidity they bring to it, in the conscious joy they feel in it, in the endurance they show. it was in orgies that jordaens found the models of his pictures: in every kermesse, in every funeral feast you could find them to this very day. statistics show us that belgium stands at the head of europe in its consumption of alcohol. out of every two houses one is an inn. every town, every village has its brewery, and the brewers are the richest traders in the country. nowhere else are festivals so animated, so noisy, so unrestrained. nowhere else is life so loved, and lived with such superabundance, at such fever-heat." it is a land that has conquered the sea, and spain, and is still unspent, raging with greedy appetites of body and brain. verhaeren has vaunted it in himself: "je suis le fils de cette race dont les cerveaux plus que les dents sont solides et sont ardents et sont voraces. je suis le fils de cette race tenace, qui veut, après avoir voulu, encore, encore et encore plus."[8] the greatest of all french poets, past and present, is émile verhaeren. he was born in 1855 at saint amand, a village on the scheldt to the east of antwerp. he has described the impressions of his childhood among the polders in his charming book _les tendresses premières_ (1904), the processions of ships sailing, like a dream plumed with wind, down the river under the stars, the dikes, "la verte immensité des plaines et des plaines"; and in the superb symbolism of _les villages illusoires_ he has magnified the villagers at their trades. he was educated at the jesuit school sainte-barbe in ghent, with georges rodenbach for a schoolfellow. then he studied law at louvain, made some feint of practising at brussels, and, in 1883, burst upon his countrymen with his audacious book _les flamandes_, the fruit of close study of flemish _genre_-painting and the poetry of maupassant. an indignant critic called him "the raphael of filth"; but he rehabilitated himself by "_les moines_" (1886), sonorous poems mirroring life in a flemish monastery, painting monks whose asceticism is as savage and voluptuous as the huge joy in life illustrated in _les flamandes._ these two books glow with health. but the poet had impaired his constitution by riotous living; and the trilogy which now followed, _les soirs_ (1887), _les débâcles_ (1888), and _les flambeaux noirs_ (1890), form one long elegy of disease. these years, his "pathological period," were full of the blackest pessimism and despair. he was much in london at this time, in isolation all the more desperate as he could not speak english. he was fascinated by the atmosphere of the english capital, its immensity, its desolation, its fogs, identifying his own mind with all of it: "_o mon âme du soir, ce londres noir qui traîne en toi!_" "je suis l'immensément perdu," he cries out in despair; he yearns for his brain to give way: "when shall i have the atrocious joy of seeing madness, nerve by nerve, attack my mind?" but the very keenness of his self-observation gradually brings him healing: a mastery of the body by the brain. this intense wrestling with disease is full of significance, and one of the lessons which verhaeren has to teach is that new conditions of existence, the din and dust of great cities, the never-resting activity of modern brains, will create a new man whose nervous system will be able to bear the strain imposed upon it. and when one sees verhaeren turning from self-torture to lose himself in the energy of the restlessly progressing world, one thinks of john addington symonds growing stronger over "leaves of grass." his recovery and reconciliation with life are symbolized in his poem _saint george_, one of the collection _les apparus dans mes chemins_ (1891). in his first two books he had been a realist and a parnassian. the volumes which follow are in _vers libres_, and they are, to a certain extent, symbolistic. _les villages illusoires_ (1894) is all symbolism: the ferryman is the stubborn artist with the green reed of hope between his teeth; the fishermen symbolize the selfish society of to-day; the ropemaker weaves the horizons of the future. _les campagnes hallucinées_ (1893) describes the desolation of the country, deserted to glut the cities; _les villes tentaculaires_ (1895) is a cinematograph of the town, while the play _les aubes_ (1898) completes the trilogy, and prophesies the dawn of a better day after a cleansing with blood. in these three books contemporary life is visualized, reviled, condoned, explained, and reconciled with beauty. poets (except walt whitman, whom verhaeren continues) have turned their eyes away from the present to the past, and sung of rural quiet rather than of urban roar. when henley's poem on the motor-car appeared, there was a cry of derision; but the only thing that was wrong with the poem was that it was not poetry. verhaeren, however, has smitten poetry out of workshops, anvils, locomotives, girders, braziers, pavements, gin-shops, brothels, the stock exchange--out of all that is monstrous and ugly to those who look at material things, as ruskin did, with the eyes of the past. the accepted ideal of beauty is grecian; but to verhaeren the beauty of a thing is not in its outward form, but in the idea that moves it. in greece the athlete was beautiful; but strength to-day is in the nerves; to-day we see more beauty in a face moulded by mind than in the thews of a discus-thrower. smoke is beautiful in the pictures of whistler and monet; the toil of grimy workmen is sublime in the sculpture of constantin meunier.[9] for verhaeren, as stefan zweig says, "a thing is the more beautiful the more finality, will, power, energy it contains. the whole universe at the present moment is overheated; it is straining in throes of endeavour; our great towns are nothing but centres of multiplied energy; their machines are the expression of forces tamed and organized; their innumerable crowds are joined together in harmonious action. thus to verhaeren all things appear full of beauty. he loves our epoch because it does not disperse effort, but condenses it, because it is not scattered, but concentrated for action. all that has will, and an aim in view, man, machine, crowd, town, capital; all that vibrates, works, hammers, travels; all that bears in itself fire, impulse, electricity, and feeling--all this rings in his verse. everything lives its minute; in this multiple gear there is no dust, no useless ornamentation; but everywhere is creation; the feeling of the future directs all action. the town is a living being." verhaeren knows the great cities of europe. he has felt the spell of hamburg, as well as of hildesheim and of little towns in spain. we have seen him during his period of depression isolated in london, and while in england he was fascinated by the reek of soot and tar in liverpool and glasgow. in london he would take a ticket to anywhere on "the underground," and roll along for hours; he wandered about the docks, and dreamed among the mummies in the british museum. and though the town of his poems may be any town, it is no doubt, at the back of his mind, london. in _les heures claires_ (1896) and _les heures d'après-midi_ (1905), verhaeren sings the "douce accalmie" of his wedded life. to translate some of the poems in these collections would be like forcing one's way into a sanctuary. as this: "très doucement, plus doucement encore, berce ma tête entre tes bras, mon front fiévreux et mes yeux las; très doucement, plus doucement encore, baise mes lèvres, et dis-moi ces mots plus doux à chaque aurore, quand me les dit ta voix et que tu t'es donnée, et que je t'aime encore." in another trilogy _toute la flandre_ (_les tendresses premières_, 1904; _la guirlande des dunes_, 1907; _les héros_, 1908) he sings his native province. of his plays, _le cloître_, in the translation of osman edwards, was staged, with honour and glory to all concerned, by the gaiety theatre in manchester in 1910. the reputation of verhaeren's schoolfellow, georges rodenbach (1855-98), has waned considerably since his death. he trails such weary alexandrines as: "aux heures du soir morne où l'on voudrait mourir, où l'on se sent le coeur trop seul, l'âme trop lasse, quel rafraîchissement de se voir dans la glace." verhaeren and rodenbach were followed on the benches of the collège sainte-barbe at ghent by charles van lerberghe, maurice maeterlinck, and grégoire le roy. van lerberghe's first work, _les flaireurs_ (1889), is in a style which is said to have suggested that of maeterlinck's first plays. his comedy _pan_ (1906) is full of devilment. in his lyric verse there is no sediment; all is clear and rippling like a beck dancing down a hill-side in the sunshine of summer dawn. if poetry is music, he is a poet unparalleled. he sings "avec des mots si frais, si virginaux, avec des mots si purs, qu'ils tremblent dans l'azur, et semblent dits, pour la première fois au paradis." what a gem is this poem:- elle dort dans l'ombre des branches, parmi les fleurs du bel été. une fleur au soleil se penche.... n'est ce pas un cygne enchanté? elle dort doucement et songe. son sein respire lentement. vers son sein nu la fleur allonge son long col frêle et vacillant. et sans qu'elle s'en effarouche, la longue, pâle fleur a mis, silencieusement, sa bouche autour du bean sein endormi. "ce que nous enseigne charles van lerberghe," says albert mockel in his masterly book on his friend, "c'est la puissance de la grâce. le charme de ses vers est unique; le sentiment dont ils nous pénètrent a une sorte de plénitude heureuse qui console le coeur en appelant l'âme vers la clarté. une onde invisible nous rafraîchit, nous pacifie ... mais la force des plus grands peut seule se fléchir à une pareille douceur, et il faut la sûreté d'un incomparable artiste pour faire de la parole écrite cette chose lumineuse et impondérable qui semble autour de nous comme une poussière d'or suspendue." it is scarcely necessary to enter into details here about maeterlinck; he needs no introduction to english readers. he has only published one volume of lyrics, _serres chaudes_ (1889), which is now printed with the fifteen songs he wrote later. in a music laden with sleep rise the faint, forced lilies of a super-sensitive soul, looking through glass darkly at a world whose contradictions seem irreconcilable. verhaeren has characterized these poems as follows: "c'était d'une inattendue angoisse, d'une extraordinaire et infinie tristesse, d'une plainte profonde et simple sortie de l'instinct scellé au fond de nous-mêmes. cela ne s'expliquait pas, mais cela perforait le fond de notre âme et trouvait sa justification dans tout l'inexplicable et dans tout l'inconnu. l'inconscient ou plutôt la subconscience y reconnaissait son langage, ou plutôt son balbutiement...." grégoire le roy has been an electrician, and is now librarian of the _académie royale des beaux-arts_ at brussels. he is the poet of retrospection, as maeterlinck is the poet of introspection. his heart "pleure d'autrefois." he is the hermit bowed down by silver hair, bending at eventide over the embers of the past, visited by weird guests draped with legend. the weft of his verse is torn by translation, it cannot be grasped, it is wafted through shadows. max elskamp is a poet who reminds one that mariolatry is minnesong. there is no reason why the devout should not be edified by his poems, but his intention is rather to give a subtle idealization of flemish life. those who know flemish painting will easily read themselves into the enchanting version of flanders that he gives us, a flanders how different to that of verhaeren and yet how equally true! "et c'est alors un pays d'ailes aux hirondelles, flandres des tours et de naïf et bon séjour; et c'est alors un pays d'ailes et tout d'amour." thomas braun, victor kinon, and georges ramaekers are fervent roman catholics. braun's _livre des bénédictions_ is a beautifully printed book illustrated by the quaint woodcuts of his brother, who is a benedictine monk. it is a thoroughly flemish book; but a volume of verse which he has just published, _j'ai plié le genou_ (published by deman), is walloon in feeling. his other volume, _philatélie_ (bibliothèque de l'occident, paris, 1910) is poetry for stamp-collectors! braun and kinon are bucolic poets, somewhat in the manner of the french poet francis jammes, who aims at uncompromising fidelity to nature and the utmost simplicity of diction. but part of kinon's work is in the style of max elskamp, fascinating poetry concerning pilgrimages,[10] and the devotional life of flanders. ramaekers, the editor of _le catholique,_ is inspired "par la vision si riante et si forte du brabant jovial, intime, et monastique." _le chant des trois règnes_ is a forest of mysticism. the "three reigns" are those of the father = the cult of minerals; the son = of plants; the holy ghost = of love. some of the poems would delight an architect. his knowledge of paintings appears equally well in his other volume of verse, _les saisons mystiques_ (librairie moderne, brussels, 1910). andré fontainas is a symbolist of the symbolists. mallarmé himself could not have bettered the following exciting sonnet: le givre: vivre libre en l'ire de l'hiver, rumeur qui se retrait au regard d'une vitre où, peut-être, frémit éphémère l'élytre de tel vol ou d'un souffle épais de menu-vair. le ciel gris s'est, fanfare! à soi-même entr'ouvert: n'est-ce pas qu'y ruisselle au front morne une mitre? non! sénile noblesse où nul n'élude un titre a se mentir moins vil que ne rampe le ver. l'heure suit l'heure encore, aucune n'est la seule: pareille à soi, voici venir qui l'enlinceule pour brusque naître d'elle et pour mourir soudain. un chardon bleu, pas même, au suaire, ni cirse offrant, rêve chétif et dédain du jardin, ne fût-ce qu'une épine à s'en former un thyrse. but the great mass of his poetry is perfectly intelligible. he is a romanticist, but in a new sense; for whereas the old romanticists turned from the sordid present to the motley middle ages and the choral pomp of rome, fontainas haunts the labyrinths of his soul, and projects his conscience beyond the bounds of space and time. in fontainas, as in gérardy, knights ride through pathless forests, but these are not the knights of spenser. the _faëry queen_ is a record of events in the outer world; fontainas is a _chevalier errant_ in the inner world of the spirit, and his castles are only settling-places for the dove of thought winging out of the unknown. iwan gilkin and albert giraud are satanists. gilkin's _la nuit_, "une vision terrifiante des turpitudes humaines," is the most interesting book in baudelaire's style since baudelaire. he began it with the intention of continuing his pilgrimage in two following books through purgatory and paradise; but, as he warns his readers in the preface to _la nuit: this is hell!_ gilkin seems to have had no aptitude for purgatory and paradise after hell; at all events, his following works have nothing to make an englishman blush. _le cérisier fleuri_ (1899) is a collection of verse in the classical style; but gilkin has since given his best work to the drama: _prométhée_ (1899), _etudiants russes_ (1906), _savonarole_ (1906). _jonas_ (1900) is a satire predicting the conquest of europe by asia. albert giraud is undoubtedly a poet of high rank. his colouring is marvellous. above all, he is a very personal poet; one can always hear the beating of his heart--"à maint endroit le sentiment mal contenu crève l'enveloppe de sérénité."[11] he is a pessimist and a baudelairian: "il se plaît," says désiré horrent, "à remuer le fond vaseux des âmes, à goûter le charme morbide des voluptés rares et raffinées." albert mockel is one of those very rare cases in which a good critic is at the same time a good poet. as a critic[12] he has probably no rival except remy de gourmont. his hall-mark is subtlety; but his learning, too, makes one gasp. (he might, no doubt, have been a professor if he had not been so brilliant). his poetry is philosophy; and the wonderful thing is that it should be such poetry. it is as light as a breeze, and like a deep river that shows its pebbles. he has in preparation a book of verse, _la flamme immortelle_, which will be a magnificent realization of his doctrine of _aspiration._ verhaeren interprets the outer world, mockel the inner world as reflected in the outer world: for existence is double, form and shadow. mockel has written, too, a child's story-book, _contes pour les enfants d'hier_[13] which should not be given to children. paul gérardy is a well-known german poet as well as a french one. he belongs to the school of stefan george. in georges marlow's poetry the prevailing note is refinement. he has written little, but what he has written is of the first water. some of the verse in his collection _l'ame en exil_ is like brussels lace: aline, au fil de l'eau tremblante où les tourelles réflétées parlent d'une ville noyée, pourquoi baigner tes mains dolentes! princesse trop frêle surgie d'un recueil de miniatures, gracile fée aux lèvres pures du vain prestige des magies, ta peine étrange quelle est-elle pour qu'en cette onde puérile mirant ta candeur infantile tu songes aux fleurs immortelles du jardin vague où les éphèbes nimbés d'équivoques lueurs, sur l'autel d'or de la langueur immolent l'ange de leurs rêves? fernand séverin, who is lecturer in french literature at the university of ghent, is a poet of great charm. his diction is apparently that of racine, but in substance he is essentially modern. "virginal" is the epithet the french critics apply to him, and it describes his chaste, transparent poetry very well. "tout y est en nuances, mystérieusement fuyantes et fondues" (victor kinon). he dreams: "les mains pleines de roses et le coeur enlacé de longs rameaux de lys." he is full of languor: "car mes rêves sont las comme de blancs oiseaux en qui verse l'ennui de l'azur et des eaux le suprême désir de dormir sur les grèves." isi-collin's _la vallée heureuse_ is full of fine things. in such a poem as _la mort d'ophélie_ the influence of pre-raphaelite paintings may be discerned. there is wordsworthianism in his verse (especially _le pâtre_), as there is in severin's; not a voluntary absorption into the outer world, but a passing reflection of it in the inner being; no direct message, but a statement of a state. the only poetess in our collection is jean dominique. besides _l'anémone des mers_ she has published _la gaule blanche_ and _l'aile mouillée_ (mercure de france, 1903 and 1909). her verse is exquisitely feminine, shimmering like shot silk, intimately personal, and perfect in form. "she notes the very shadow that roses cast on her soul." she has written poems which are worthy of sappho, as that which begins: "dans la chaleur muette le ciel lisse ses plumes comme un grand épervier aux ailes floconneuses; mais ce soir, l'oiseau d'or entravé dans les brumes, blotti contre la terre humble et délicieuse, dormira sur le coeur des femmes amoureuses." georges rency's pegasus was a delicate steed with iridescent blue wings when he took it out into the shadows, and the moonlights, and the dawns, and recorded its flights on excellent paper. since then it seems to have died of inanition, but he himself has produced a robust body of novels and criticism. as to sylvain bonmariage, he is a prodigy. he is twenty-four years of age, and he has written twelve books. every one of his plays has seen the footlights. "précoce à épouvanter le diable et candide à ravir les saints," is albert giraud's description of him. our collection does not exhaust the poetry of belgium. perhaps no poem we have selected has so good a chance of immortality as a snatch of song by léon montenaeken: la vie est vaine: un peu d'amour, un peu de haine.... et puis--bonjour! la vie est brève: un peu d'espoir, un peu de rêve ... et puis--bonsoir! j. bithell. _april 1911._ [1] charles van lerberghe was directly inspired by rossetti and burne-jones. verhaeren has written much art criticism. fontainas, who has translated keats, and milton's _samson agonistes_ and _comus_, is a historian of painting (_histoire de la peinture française au xixème siècle 1801-1900_, mercure de france, 1906). max elskamp illustrates his own books with quaint, mediæval woodcuts; see, especially, his _alphabet de notre dame la vierge_ (antwerp, 1901). mockel has written a study of victor rousseau (1905). le roy is an amateur painter. [2] verhaeren heard wagner's _walküre_ twenty times running. mockel is a learned musician; of his two volumes of verse _chantefable un peu naïve_ and _clartés_ contain musical notations of rhythms. gilkin found it difficult to decide whether to be a musician or a poet. [3] verhaeren, who is a fleming _pur sang_, and who was brought up in an exclusively flemish-speaking district, knows practically no flemish. maeterlinck, on the other hand, might have written equally well in flemish. [4] see georges rency, _physionomies littéraires_, pp. 120-122. [5] see gilkin, _origines estudiantines de la jeune belgique._ [6] gilkin, _quinze années de littérature_. [7] founded by the lawyer edmond picard, who discovered "l'âme belge." he advocated a literature which should be specifically belgian. [8] "ma race," les forces tumultueuses. [9] stefan zweig. _émile verhaeren_. [10] "la belgique sait mieux que toute autre jouer dans la paille avec l'enfant de bethléem." (thomas braun.) [11] grégoire le roy, _le masque_, may 1910. [12] _propos de littérature_,1894; _émile verhaeren_, 1895; _stéphane mallarmé. un héros_. mercure de france, 1899; _charles van lerberghe_, mercure de france, 1901. [13] mercure de france (1908). contemporary belgian poetry. sylvain bonmariage. 1887--. /$ autumn evening in the orchard. in the monotonous orchard alley glints the languid sun that yet is loth to leave this unripe, fascinating autumn eve, and draws a pastel with faint, feminine tints. spite of the great gold fruits around us strown, of the last freshly-opened roses, which but now we gathered, spite of all the rich odour filling the dusk from hay new-mown, of all the ripe, warm, naked fruit thou art i covet nothing but the savour, while thou liest in the grass there with a smile, tormenting with thy curious eyes my heart. you whom i love in silence. you whom i love in silence, as i must, fain had i been in olden tournament to shiver lances for your eyes' content, making full many a baron bite the dust. or rather i had been that favoured page who trained your hounds and falcons that he might after you down the valley, o'er the height go galloping in eager vassalage. i might have heard my lord solicit bliss, and swear to you his vehement promises; and gone to mass with you at dewy prime; and in the cool of evenings i, to woo the smile of your loved lips, had sung to you the secret love of lovers of old time. $/ thomas braun. 1876--. the benediction of the nuptial ring. "_ut quæ cum gestaverit fidelitatem integram suo sponso tenens in mutua caritate vivat._" almighty god, bless now the ring of gold which bride and bridegroom shall together hold! they whom fresh water gave to you are now united in you by the marriage vow. the ring is of a heavy, beaten ore, and yet it shall not make the finger sore. but easefully be carried day and night, because its secret spirit makes it light. its perfect circle sinks into the skin, nor hurts it, and the phalanx growing thin under its pressure moulds itself ere long, yet keeps its agile grace and still is strong. so love, which in this symbol lies, with no beginning more nor ending here below, shall, if you bless it, lord, like gold resist, and never show decay, nor flaw, nor twist, and be so light, though solid, that the soul, a composite yet indivisible whole, shall keep its tender impress to the last, and never know the bonds that bind it fast. the benediction of wine. "_ut vinum cor hominis lætifloet._" lord, you who heard the prayer of your divine mother, and gave your guests that cana wine, deign now to bless as well the vintage new, which cheers the heart of those who pray to you. the breeze blew warm upon the flowering shoot, and the sky coloured all the round, green fruit, which, guarded from oidium and lice, thrushes, phylloxera, and from dormice, ripened as you, o lord, would have it be. the tendril curled around the sapling tree, and soon the shoots bent under sun-blue sheaves with which september loads the crackling leaves. over the winepress sides the juice has run, and, heavily fermenting, cracked the tun. o lord, we dedicate to you this wine, wherein is pent the spirit of the rhine; we vow to you the vintages of france, of the moselle, black forest, of byzance; cyprus, marsala, malaga, and tent, malmsey, and shiraz of the orient; that of the gold isles scented by the sea, sherry, tokay, thetalassomene; nectar of bishops and of kings, champagne; the blue wine from the hill-sides of suresnes; the sour, white wine of huy; château margaux, shipped to your abbots world-wide from bordeaux; oporto's wine that drives the fever out, and gave to english statesmen rest and gout; lacryma christi, châteauneuf of popes, grown, o good lord, upon avignon's slopes; whether in skins or bottles; those you quaff with ceremonial face or lips that laugh; keep them still clear when cobwebs round them grow, to make all world-sick hearts leap up and glow, to lighten minds that carking cares oppress, and yet not dimming them with drunkenness; put into them the vigour which sustains muscles grown flabby; and along the veins let them regenerate impoverished blood; and bless the privileged pure wine and good, whose common, fragile colour, still unspiced, suddenly ceasing to be wine, o christ, soon as the blest, transmuting word is said, perpetuates your blood for sinners shed. the benediction of the cheeses. "_dignare sanctificare hanc creaturam casei quam ex adipe animalium producere dignatus es._" when from the void, good lord, this earth you raised, you made vast pasture-lands where cattle grazed, where shepherds led their flocks, and shore their fleeces, and scraped their hides and cut them into pieces, when they had eaten all their nobler flesh, which with earth's virgin odour still was fresh. o'er herve's plateaux our cattle pass, and browse the ripe grass which the mist of summer bows, and over which the scents of forests stream. they give us butter, curds, and milk, and cream. god of the fields, your cheeses bless to-day, for which your thankful people kneel and pray. let them be fat or light, with onions blent, shallots, brine, pepper, honey; whether scent of sheep or fields is in them, in the yard let them, good lord, at dawn be beaten hard; and let their edges take on silvery shades under the most red hands of dairymaids; and, round and greenish, let them go to town weighing the shepherd's folding mantle down; whether from parma or from jura heights, kneaded by august hands of carmelites, stamped with the mitre of a proud abbess, flowered with the fragrance of the grass of bresse, from brie, hills of the vosges, or holland's plain, from roquefort, gorgonzola, or from spain! bless them, good lord! bless stilton's royal fare, red cheshire, and the tearful, cream gruyère! bless kantercaas, and bless the mayence round, where aniseed and other grains are found; bless edam, pottekees, and gouda then, and those that we salute with "sir," like men. isi-collin. 1878--. to the muse. skilful the rune of symbols to unravel, and mute avowals hearkened unawares, before the light from lips of flowers fares with chosen petals i have strown the gravel. she i awaited came not to the lawn, and, solitary, i have chased all night the lilac's and the lily's breath in flight, and drunk it deeply in the brimful dawn. upon the sand these flowers that i have strown my foot has crushed them down with cruel force, and i am kneeling near the mirroring source, where i have sought her mouth and kissed mine own. but now i know, and sing with fire renewed thy mercy, and thy beauty, and thy youth eternal, and i love thee without ruth, whom sappho the divine and virgil wooed. i have all odours to perfume thee here, and dyes for mouth and eyes, and i will make thy looks more luminous, and deep, and clear than the stainless azure bathing in this lake. come with thy too red lips and painted eyes! my senses wait for thee in these bright bowers, where they are flowering with the soul of flowers, o mother of fables and of lyric lies, o courtesan! come where these willows wave, lie by the water, i would have thee bare, with nothing round thine ample shoulders save all the sun's gold vibrating in thy hair. a dream. dream of the far hours when we were exiled beyond the pale of our happiness; draw again over our love that ancient veil. offer your lips to the evening breeze that sings among the branches and passes, lay back your head on my knees, where the river the willow glasses. rest in my hands your head tired with the weight of the autumn in its tresses red, and dream! (a fabulous sunset bleeds in the calm water wherein, among the reeds, our double shadow grows thin, bathed in the sunset's red, and the radiant gold of your head.) dream of your virginal spirit's plight, when i opened your robe in our wedding night. (the noise of a wing that lags dies in the waterflags. and the shadows which descend with the afterglow, mysterious and slow, stay on the bank and o'er the waters bend their faces of silence.) dream of our love, of our joys, and in the shadow sing them low; at the rim of your naked lips my voice shall ambush your voice. (the moonbeams slow and white linger on the forest tops, fall and glide on the river they light, and now a veil of radiance drops on our protecting willow....) dream, this is the hour of snow. jean dominique. 1873--. thou whom the summer crosses, as a fawn. thou whom the summer crosses, as a fawn, red in the sun, through forest alleys springs, my soul with the deep shadows round thee drawn, hast thou not seen the sad, blonde swarm of bees pass hanging on the eddies of the breeze, bearing on millions of exiguous wings a little motionless and gilded queen?... hast thou not felt the orphan grace that starts to life with life in any beast, and glows, tormented with enchantment, in the hearts of delicate fawns and simple eyes of does?... my sylvan soul, so full of nests and warm, remembering thy flown birds with pangs how keen, shalt thou not ever, in parched summer's breath, hang like a humming heart and keep the swarm of gilded bees bearing their golden queen upon thine orphan heart more sad than death?... and shalt thou ever of ecstatic nights, and of the royal summer crossing earth, know but the printed foot in amorous flights of the red fawn, and shadow-dappled mirth?... soul whom the winter too shall cross ere long, and, after, passion's spring as bindweeds strong, more sad than death shall thou not ever seize this little orphan, golden queen, in state borne round the world upon the eddying breeze by many a thousand longings that vibrate?... the legend of saint ursula. _painted by carpaccio._ the slender ursula has decked her hair, and her pale visage, and her trailing gown with odorous collars and with shining pearls; her tapering hand the precious burden holds of a sheaf of delicately broken folds; her fragile temple bears the seal of god. there comes to meet her, o'er the port's green wave, a gallant pagan prince clad with gold hair, and grace and love, and loveliness suave. the maiden and the youth have mouths so grave, that in the sleeping air on the lagoon already seem the harps of death to swoon.... ursula, virgin, humble as blonde thatch, is earnest, and in costly raiment straight, and like a kingdom taketh her the prince.... but she already knows love there is none! but she already knows another youth, the fairest archer of a lordly race, awaits her at another ocean's rim to free her sovran soul to fly to god.... and yet she cometh, with her exquisite neck beaten by tresses garlanded with pearls, and the golden youth who loves her with sad cheer hearkens approaching nigh his trembling heart, following her silent step, a host of wings!... the soul's promise. if you can see my soul within my eyes, i will be softer than a bed of down for your fatigue to sigh in and to swoon; i will be kinder to you and more sweet than after vain adieux returning soon, and tenderer than a sky bedimmed with doves! ah! if you feel my heart rise in my eyes, like the sick perfume of the autumn rose, if you will enter on my spirit's waste, upon whose stones no foot but yours shall sound, if you will love my visions and my vows, i will be more your kin than all your own! upon my soul's wild thyme and moss, and on its bare stones where the sun is wont to dance, and in its wind with fire and solace laden, in the whole desert of my crimson love, i will immerse you in my honeycombs. ah! can you gaze into my blinding soul, and know my heart has leapt into my eyes, as the sling sends after the singing bird a stone at the mysterious welkin thrown?... if you will scan the desert of mine eyes, o you will see what suffering immense, and what vast joy and silence how divine, when, from my soul's height i shall bear you at, we shall feel rise in us the wondrous wave of scents of roses and the falling night!... a secret. i will put my two hands on my mouth, to hush the words that, when i see you, to it rush. i will put my two hands on mine eyes, lest you should in them find what i were fain you knew. i will put them on my bosom, to conceal that which might seem the desperate heart's appeal. and i will put them gently into yours, my two hands sick with grief that long endures.... and they shall come full of their tenderness, most silently, and even with no caress, with the whole burden of a secret broken, of which my mouth, eyes, heart had gladly spoken. tired of being empty they to you shall come, heavy with sadness, sad with being dumb; so desolate, discouraged, pale and frail, that you may bend, perhaps, and see they ail!... max elskamp. 1862--. of evening. all at the heart of a far domain, with those to whom our hearts do strain, my truelove weeps for me, distraught by my death the week has wrought. my heart's belovèd grieveth sore, and plunges her two hands like flowers into her eyes whose sorrow showers, my heart's belovèd grieveth sore. all at the heart of a far domain, unto her feet her skates she ties, feeling that in her heart is ice, far unto me her tired feet strain; my truelove hangs to the chapel pane, that gazes over all the plain, with rings, and salt, and dry bread, my wretched soul that will not die. all at the heart of a far domain, my truelove never will weep again the festivals the seasons bring, with family rings on fingers twain; my love has seen me promising, like a saint, to spirits pure a sunday that shall aye endure, and all at the heart of a far domain. full of grace. and jesus all rosy, and the earth all blue, mary of grace, in your round hands upcurled, as might two fruits be: jesus and the world, and jesus all rosy, and the earth all blue. and jesus, and mary, and joseph the spouse, for all my life i place my trust in you, as they in brittany and childhood do, and joseph the spouse, and jesus and mary. then egypt too, the flight and herod, my old soul and my feet that tremble, seeing towards the distant places ambling, fleeing, and the ass and herod, and egypt too. now, jesus all golden, like statues of christ, o mary, in your hands that hold the sword, over my town whereon your tears are poured, jesus more golden in your arms and christ. full of grace. now more and more, fain were my lips your inexhaustible grace to say, o mary, at the sailing-day of bowsprits and of all my ships unto the islands of the sea, where went my merchandize of old, by winds on other oceans rolled from isle to island of the sea. but i have donned the broken shoes of those who dwell on land, and sprent my tongue with ash of discontent because my memory seems to lose the sounding psalm that sang you hail, who decked my prows in gold attire, when in your hands the sheets were fire, the sun a spreading peacock's tail. now be it so, since in me stays salvation that the sails possess under the wind the stars caress of far beyond and other days, and let it be your self-same grace in this to-day of broken shoon, the same sky, and the same round moon as when i sailed, o rich in grace. comforter of the afflicted. ineffable souls are known to me, in houses of poor bodies pent, and sick to death with discontent, ineffable souls are known to me; known to me are poor christmas eyes, shining out their little lights as prayers go glimmering through the nights known to me are poor christmas eyes weeping with coveting the sky into their hands with misery meek; and feet that stumble as they seek in pilgrimage the radiant sky. and then poor hungers too i know, poor hungers of poor teeth upon loaves baked an hundred years agone; and then poor thirsts i also know; and women sweet ineffably, who in poor, piteous bodies dwell, and very handsome men as well, but who are sick as women be. comforter of the afflicted. now winter gives me his hand to hold, i hold his hand, his hand is cold; and in my head, afar off, blaze old summers in their sick dog-days; and in slow whiteness there arise pale shimmering tents deep in my eyes and sicilies are in them, rows of islands, archipelagos. it is a voyage round about, too swift to drive my fever out, to all the countries where you die, sailing the seas as years go by, and all the while the tempest beats upon the ships of my white sheets, that surge with starlight on them shed, and all their swelling sails outspread. i taste upon my lips the salt of ocean, like the bitter malt drunk in the land's last orgy, when from the taverns reel the men; and now i see that land i know: it is a land of endless snow...; make thou the snow less hard to bear, o mary of good coverings, there, and less like hares my fingers run o'er my white sheets that fever spun. comforter of the afflicted. i pray too much for ills of mine, o mary, others suffer keen, witness the little trees of green laid where your altar candles shine; for all the joys of kermesse days, and all the roads that thither wend are full of cripples without end, by night are all the kermesse ways. and then the season grows too chill for these consumptive steeds of wood, although the drunken organ should, alone, keep its illusions still. poorer than i have more endured; despairing of their hands and feet, poor folks that cough and nothing eat, people too agèd to be cured, with ulcers wherein winter smarts, o virgin, meekly, turn by turn, they come to you and candles burn, all in a nook of silvered hearts. comforter of the afflicted. now is the legend revealed, and my cities also are healed, consoled till they love each other, like a child that has wept, by its mother, in the things mysterious all of altars processional, and now all my country is dight with dahlias and lilies white, your candles to glorify mary, ere may passes by. lo! endless the pleasure is, may returned, and maladies borne to horizons blue, on vessels simple and true, far away, on the sea so far hardly seen, or like dots they are. now, under trees, the time glides in the street where my life abides; mary of meek workers, steep in the may-wood my head in the sleep and the rest that my good tools have earned; sound mind in a sound body urned, in a mary-month more splendid, because all my task is ended. to the eyes. now, sky of azure on houses rosy, like a child of flanders preach the simple religion i teach, like a sky of azure on houses rosy; lo, to the vexed i bring these roses, when their memory to the islands reaches, the voices that my gospel preaches, like the gladsome text a child's talk glozes. you people happy with very little: you women and men of my city, and of all my moments of pity, be happy with very little; for letters blue on pages rosy, this is all the book that i read you, unto your pleasaunce to lead you, in a country blue houses rosy. to the mouth. for, you my brothers and sisters, with me in my bark you shall go, and my cousins, the fishers, shall show where the fin of the shoaled fishes glisters, whose tides the bow-nets heap, till the baskets cry out, days and days, darkening the blue ocean's face, as in a path crowded sheep. you shall see my nets all swell, and st. peter helping the fishes which for the fridays he wishes, sole, flounder, mackerel. and st. john the evangelist lending a hand with the sheets, at the low ebb of autumn heats, when haddocks come, says the mist. and our women with tucked-up sleeves, like banquets on your tables; and miracles, and fables to tell in the holy eves. for the ear. then nearer and nearer yet to the sea in a golden fret, on the dikes where the houses end, the trees to the sea-breeze that bend; with their baptismal names anchored here, in the rivers to which they are dear, the vessels my harbour loves best, clustered, a choir, at their rest. now in their festivity, i salute you, _anna-marie,_ who seem in your white sails to bear cherubs that flit through the air; and with joy that i scarcely can speak i see you again, _angélique,_ you with no shrouds on your mast, safe returned from iceland at last. but now, like _gabrielle_, sing your new sails smooth as a wing, and weep no more, _madeleine,_ for your nets you have lost on the main, since all are pardoned, even the wind, for kisses given, so that in kisses and glee these visiting billows may be content with the homage they pay, high the sea, to sing the may. to-day is the day of rest, the sabbath. to-day is the day of rest, the sabbath, a morning of sunshine, and of bees, and of birds in the garden trees, to-day is the day of rest, the sabbath; the children are in their white dresses, towns are gleaming through the azure haze, this is flanders with poplar-shaded ways, and the sea the yellow dunes caresses. to-day is the day of all the angels: michael with his swallows twittering, gabriel with his wings all glittering, to-day is the day of all the angels; then, people here with happy faces, all the people of my country, who departed one by one, two by two, to look at life in blue distant places; to-day is the day of rest, the sabbath- the miller is sleeping in the mill- to-day is the day of rest, the sabbath, and my song shall now be still. mary, shed your hair. mary, shed your hair, for lo! here the azure cherubs blow, and jesus wakes upon your breast; where his rosy fingers rest; and golden angels lay their chins upon their breathing violins. now morning in the meads is green, and, mary, look at life's demesne: how infinitely sweet it seems, from the forests and the streams to roofs that cluster like an isle; and, mary, see your cities smile happy as any child at play, while from spires and steeples they proclaim the simple gospel peace with their showering melodies from the gold dawn to the sunset sky, greeted, mary of houses, by the men of flanders loving still the brown, centennial earth they till. and sing now, all ye merry men who plough the glebe, sing once again your flanders sweet to larks that sing with gladsome voices concerting, and sail afar, ye ships that glass your flags in billows green as grass, for jesus holds his hands above, mary, this festival of love made by the sky for summer's birth, with silk and velvet covering earth. and mary reads a gospel-page. and mary reads a gospel-page, with folded hands in the silent hours, and mary reads a gospel-page, where the meadow sings with flowers, and all the flowers that star the ground in the far emerald of the grass, tell her how sweet a life they pass, with simple words of dulcet sound. and now the angels in the cloud, and the birds too in chorus sing, while the beasts graze, with foreheads bowed, the plants of scented blossoming; and mary reads a gospel-page, the pealing hours she overhears, forgets the time, and all the years, for mary reads a gospel-page; and masons building cities go homeward in the evening hours, and, cocks of gold on belfry towers, clouds and breezes pass and blow. and whether in gray or in black cope. and whether in gray or in black cope,- spider of the eve, good hope,- smoke ye roofs, and tables swell with meats to mouths delectable; and while the kitchen smoke upcurls, kiss and kiss, you boys and girls! night, the women, where they sit, can no longer see to knit; now, like loving fingers linking, work is done and sleep is blinking, as balm on pious spirits drips, all tearful eyes, all praying lips, and straw to beasts, to mankind beds of solace for their weary heads. good-night! and men and women cross arms on your souls, or hearts that toss. and in your dreams of white or blue, servants near the children you; and peace now all your life, you trees, mills, and roofs, and brooks, and leas, and rest you toilers all, between the woollen soft, the linen clean, and christs forgotten in the cold, and magdalenes within the fold, and heaven far as sees the eye, at the four corners of the sky. andré fontainas. 1865--. her voice. o voice vibrating like the song of birds, o frail, sonorous voice wherein upwells laughter more bright than ring of wedding bells, i listen to her voice more than her words. soul of old rebecs, spirit of harpsichords, within her voice your soft inflection dwells; blisses of love some ancient viol tells, kiss snatched by lips that swift lips turn towards. her voice is sweetness of chaste dreams, the scent of iris, cinnamon, and incense blent, a music drunk, a folded mountain's calm; it is within me made of living sun, of luminous pride and rhythms vermilion; it is the purest, the most dazzling psalm. cophetua. with right arm on the open casement rim, the negro king cophetua, with sad mien, and eyes that do not see, looks at the green autumnal ocean rolling under him. his listless dream goes wandering without goal; he is not one who would be passion's slave; and no remorse, nor memory from its grave may haunt the leisure of his empty soul. he does not hear the melancholy chaunt of girls who beg before him, hollow, gaunt with fasting, coughing in the mellow sun, and unawares, he knows not how it came, he feels within his hardened heart a flame, and burns his eyes at the eyes of the youngest one. desires. what does she dream, lost in her hair's cascade, the lonely child with flowering hands as wan as garlands pale?--of the plains of days agone with pools of water lilies, where she strayed on paths of chance her hands with flowers arrayed, and where alms welcomed her?--and never shone as now her eyes her jewels braided on her gowns of gold and purple and brocade. but she sees nothing round her. in the room amber and aromatics melt the gloom, the dusk's hot odour through the window streams; as heavy as an opal's changing fires, sigh in the evening mist and die desires, while naked at her glass the maiden dreams. adventure. under the diadem of rustling pearls and sapphires in their grasp of gold, in yellow hair that undulatingly unfurls over her shoulders slow and cold, and purple cloak exulting with brocade, the princess of the manor's games and joys. and in the jubilant noise rivers of lightning flame unrolled, and the rich purple torch sheds its delight, and twists its rustling tresses in the night. the princess of the manor's joys lifts in a dawn of amethysts her tender visage that more sadly aches than gloamings on the lunar face of lakes, with lingering smile upon her lip she lists, and casts a call into the evening mists. in spite of omens tragical, all they who wait upon her come to lawns where sistrum, fife, and drum to revelry and dancing call. o king! like mourning is our merry-making! out of our arms thou hast thyself exiled, and by our kisses art no more beguiled! our hearts for thee are aching! thou hast fled, thou hast fled, and in the night i raise my head, and call for thee with sobs, and bosom sore! but still our festivals shall be forsaken, the mourning from our hearts shall not be taken, my fingers nevermore shall o'er thy golden velvet tresses glide; my heavy arms shall nevermore thy neck enlace in passionate embrace rich with the jewels of the bracelets of my pride! farandola and roundelay, and the mad songs of pride, in sudden waves over the threshold glide, and through the chambers sway. thou never shalt return from unknown lands, o king! the sceptre is fallen from thy hands, the lassitude that lulled thee in its lap has stolen from thy proud, young years their sap, now art thou crossing thresholds far forlorn of mysteries and adventures luring thee where monsters crouch beneath the twisted tree; chimeras and the pitiless unicorn shall belch their fire where thou thy way wouldst grope and thou shalt nevermore have my caress to soothe thee into happy heedlessness of life, and perils of inimical hope. o come back, ere it be too late! at evening come unto the joys that wait, come to the dancing and to thy princess, who cradled thee with kisses and with tenderness, and sweet refrains of songs. come to thy crown and sceptre, and the throngs of them that love thee, and the memory of thine ancestors shall bring back to thee forgetfulness of mad adventures in the kiss of her who thy princess and sister is. luxury. how vain are songs! can they be worth the hymn to your ecstatic eyes of mine that swim? the noblest song of man no bosom stirs, weak are sonorous words, but conquerors are ye, glances of amber and of fire, lips you, and clinging kisses slow to tire that in my soul are scorching! you that dare leap out of longing, kisses! and you hair of virgin gold that glints like noonday suns! and marble whiteness where, like lava, runs your wild blood, snow and brazier!- here i lie your slave for ever, at your feet i die in sleepful spasms that the senses cloy, and the slow languor of the tasted joy; mad with your velvety and waxen flesh that holds my soul and body in its mesh; i love you, i am poured out at your feet, your hands are with lascivious jasmine sweet, your beauty blooms for me! in my embrace i feel your life blowing upon my face, and entering into me! your blinding eyes thrill me with raptures of that paradise whose rubies bleed, whose yellow topazes sleep in the sloth of sensualities, and where the limitless horizons hide our hell of luxuries grated round with pride. i love thee, though the kisses of thy teeth, cunning to bite in their red vulva sheath, have the allure of lamias that enslave with luxury swift and cruelty suave. through tortures from your native orient swim ineffably pure o'er peaceful lakes the slim swans of your voice white in their wildering and subtle scents of snow, and on their wing bear me towards the hope your bright eyes beam. now let me lie upon your breasts and dream. say nothing! let us sleep in our blue bower under the tufted pleasures of the hour, by the night's tranquil torpor lulled and kissed ... already yon far dawn of amethyst dyes the deep heavens, and the moon at rest upon her soft cloud cushions hath caressed with argent light the forest's idle trance, and starred the stream with eyes that gleam and glance! and now the dawn is on our pillow--hide your eyes--i shiver--they are haggard, wide! sea-scape. under basaltic porticoes of calm sea-caves, heavy with alga and the moss of fucus gold, in the occult, slow shaking of sea-waves, among the alga in proud blooms unfold the cups of pride of silent, slender gladioles.... the mystery wherein dies the rhythm of the waves in gleams of kisses long and calm unrolls, and the red coral whereon writhes the alga cold stretches out arms that bleed with calm flowers, and beholds its gleams reflected in the rest of waves. now here you stand in gardens flowered with alga, cold in the nocturnal, distant song of waves, queen whose calm, pensive looks are glaucous gladioles, raising above the waves their light-filled bowls, among the alga on the coral where the ocean rolls. a propitious meeting. propitious dawn smiles on him wandering and fretful in the evil forest deeps; the heavy night's long, bitter rumour sleeps; the sun's clear song makes the horizon ring. the scent of sage and thyme is as a sting unto his jaded sense, the wind that sweeps the blue sea round the promontory steeps freshens with hope his fate's proud blossoming. the glory of joy into his soul returns, and his heroic dream leaps up and burns, even as this dawn's far-flung vermilion, and lo! at the horizon, very calm, pacing their steeds, and holding out their palm, the kings he deemed dead marching in the sun. the hours. the tiring hour that weeps, and the young hour gay with sun, hour after hour creeps, hours after hours run along the river banks. this is an hour of dawn that vapour cloaks. yonder a thread, so it would seem, stretches a bridge across the stream. shadow follows shadow, the mist chokes the water sleepy as a moat's, a tug smokes, and drags its heavy, grating chain, and drags its train of ghostlike boats, walls of black along a hidden track towards the arches blear where now they disappear. like sudden palms of gold, three sunbeams glide to where the waters hide, and all along the river in the cold life is again begun, with all its joys of toil and noise awakening in the quivering, crimson sun. the hour is rising radiant with mirth, beaming smiles down on the earth, o festival of light! here is life that smiles upon its toil, and with high forehead makes the night recoil towards the sun in heavens bright with strength and with delight. life quickens on faces mad and fervent zest. to live! is when the hot blood races and swells the breast, and makes the words leap out in ready throng! life is to be alone and strong, and master of one's fate! ye floods of purple pour in state, ripen the morn, and roll men's blood along! the wise have never lived and do not know what joys are in mad battle, carnage and great noise, when courage with courage vies. the wise are they who when the cautious eve creeps on to night exile themselves from the festival of light weeping its tears of proud gold on the river, o'er the lamp-lit book to shiver. to live is better, and to ring one's heel on the floor of a palace won by crimsoned steel, or underneath a charger's hoofs to tread the grass of roads down-trodden by the fugitive foe who has dyed them red. but the young hour gay with sun, the tiring hour that weeps, hour after hour creeps hours after hours run along the river banks. now cooler are noon's beams, o dreams reposed with languor and with ease, the waters creep, o calm dreams! upon the moss in shade of elms and alder-trees the peaceful fishers sleep; a long thread swims upon the dying stream. in the foliage never a shiver, the sun darts never a beam, all is dumb. the earth around, the meadows and the river, and the air with sunshine numb, and the forest with its leafy houses, everywhere all action drowses, and the earth hesitates with indecision, a smoker's vague vision. the only wisdom is to live the hours of the river, sleeping on its slopes. why should we madly follow fugitive inclement pride and crumbling hopes along the precipices of the heavy night, that swallows up all ruined light? no! to live is to follow all the river's turnings, sailing one's life with dreams and yearnings, with prow set to the orient of oblivion, to conquer all the sea and all the isles that smile, that no discoverer will ever set foot on save he who kept desire a virgin, all the while, o dream! the young hour gay with sun, the tiring hour that weeps, hour after hour creeps, hours after hours run, along the river banks. awake awake! it is a joy among hibernal hours to plunge into the pane the hoar-frost flowers; behold: the petals glittering on the pane open their wings that dream would follow fain. awake, and revel in the dawn's pure joys, and smile upon the time the sun becalms: in the bright garden, save in dream, no noise but a long imagined shivering, o palms! come, and behold my love, as ever of old, make the vast silence flower lit by thy glance, glad with its peaceful pinions to enfold our passion soothed with rich remembrance. life is calm. life is calm, even as this evening of sweet summer, now the bird is silent on the bough, that bends above the river, whose reeds no longer quiver; and the pacific night and wise sleeps without a shudder under cloudless skies. life is calm! it is your face, o sister dear, at happiness scarce smiling here, life is your face, dear sister, so calm; as life is and your happiness, your face is cloudless, calm, and passionless. even the river hushes between its banks, among its rushes; one by one fall flowers; silent, gentle eventide, life is calm where waters glide; by waters where the happiness that lies smiling, sister, in the tender flashing of your eyes, is wondering at the waters, and the evenings, and the hours. frontispiece. the gems that ivories clip, and chrysoberyls puerile, mingling their gleams, beguile the dole of the black tulip; the fountain weeps in the old garden o'er flowers sad, which by the dawn are clad in amethyst and in gold: in the boxwood shadow lingers, in sentimental _fêtes,_ the _chevalier_, and awaits the princess whose pale fingers are flowers that bring relief unto her languorous grief. invitation. the ruby my vow desires for your beauty smiling kind is surely incarnadined by a limpid mirror's fires. ice with the flame interchanges, and your eyes hard with dignity bruise the sobbed longing to be a bauble your hand arranges. but remember the waters yonder cradle the vessels that wander to the isle in the bright future hidden, and come while the winter is dark, to sail our adventurous bark madly o'er oceans forbidden. to the pole. through fogs impassible that freeze the soul, and under torpor-laden skies of gray, if none can ever open out a way to the icy horror of the reachless pole, yet those who died or shall die striving thither, in faith of victory and glory of dream, have known the rapturous pride of conquest gleam, brief flower of hope that never grief shall wither. but thou, long cheated by the immutable thirst of being loved, hast too, too well rehearsed the vanity of combats sterile all, and dost with bitter, pitiless irony see those who go following ghosts that ever flee sink in the chasm where thyself didst fall. paul gérardy. 1870--. she. she whom my heart in dream already loves will under childlike curls have great blue eyes; her voice will be as sweet as that of doves, her skin a faint rose like a dream that dies. so slender she will be among earth's daughters, that you would think of lilies under glass, of a fountain weeping to the sky its waters, or the moon's beam quivering on dewy grass. and, from her deep heart to her lips arising, guessing what seeds of songs are in me sown, she will be ever humming them, disguising my soul with the golden gamut of her own. and never a bitter word will come from her; her eyes will always call to my caress, chaste as the eyes of my own mother were, melting with my own mother's tenderness. evil love. i have yearned for the wicked child with her sensual mouth's red glow, and her restless eyes that show how sateless her soul is and wild. the lustful virgin, the child with her sick flesh fainting above the sweat of novels of love, by which her soul is defiled. she sins in her sleep; and in her evil smile there gleams, implacable as her dreams, the lust of perversion and sin. i have dreamt of the virgin impure; the fire of her hair has profaned my chastity with its lure- and my eyes with tears are stained. the owl. there is a haggard flitting through the night, and stupid wings are writhing through the wind, and then, afar, a screeching of dark fright, like cries of a frail conscience that has sinned. it is the shy owl of long moonless nights, it is the inconsolable owl who peers with blear eyes through drear darkness, and who blights the peace of sleep with stark foreboding fears. the inconsolable night-bird weeping through the gloam, the spectral bird who fears the day, whose panic flitting chills the dark, and who fills space with cries that quiver with dismay. but thou, poor owl, an ivied steeple seëst, where thou canst hide from dawning's garish hour- my heart, who from the kiss of woman fleëst, where shalt thou find the peace of some old tower? of sad joy. i am angry with you, little girl, because of your gracious smiles, and your restful lips, and teeth of pearl, and the black glitter of your great eyes. i am angry with you, but on my knees, for when i went away, in happy wise, far from you, far as goes the breeze, i could think of nothing but of your eyes. i was timid, i never dared look back, and i went singing as madmen do, to forget your eyes, alack! but my song was all about you. some song or other. the song of moonlight all that trembles as aspens shake, the thrush sang it at the evenfall to the listening swan on the blue lake. it is all of love and distress, and of joy and of love, and then there are sobs of gold and weariness, and ever comes joy back again. far, far away flew the thrush, and the swan went pondering all the new words, by lily and rush, with his head underneath his wing. of autumn. while the moon through the heavens glides, with music enchanting our way, come in the gladness to stray of the gorgeous autumn-tides. now comes the wind, and lifts the gold of glad forests along; and many a mystical song along the breeze with it drifts. this life is most gracious and dear, enchanting our way as we go with the laughter and golden glow of autumns singing clear. on the sea. blow, blow, thou boisterous tempest, blow, bitter winds and stark; the fisher, he cannot hear you, a-sailing in his dream-bark. he sails to what pale daughters, to what horizons dim? rage, rage ye winds and climb ye waters, but we are waiting for him. we are the lovelorn maidens, alone in the wearisome dark; you winds and you waters that love us, overturn him in his dream-bark. iwan gilkin. 1858--. psychology. a surgeon, i the souls of men dissect, bending my feverish brow above their shameless perversions, sins, and vices, all their nameless primitive lusts and appetites unchecked. upon my marble men and women spread their open bellies, where i find the hidden ulcers of passions filthy and forbidden, and probe the secret wounds of dramas dread. then, while my arms with scrofulous blood are dyed, i note in poems clear with scrupulous art what my keen eyes in these dark deeps descried. and if i need a subject, i am able to stretch myself on the dissecting table, and drive the scalpel into my own heart. the capital. a dolorous fruit is the vast capital. its bursten skin and pulp too ripened dye opulently their rich rottenness with green gold, violet, and red phosphorus. oozing a sickly sweet, thick, cancerous juice, its spongy flesh melts in the mouth, and in its pensive poisons germinate the rank, perverted sins of fever-tortured brains. so strange its spice, so exquisite its taste,- a macerated ginger in a rare elixir,- i plunged my teeth in it with greedy haste. but dizziness i ate, and madness drank. and that is why i trail a debile frame, with my youth dying in the husk of my strength. the penitent. the penitent of cities damned am i. in shameful taverns where rank liquors flow, and in new sodoms viciously aglow, where outrage hides its lusts with murder nigh, i watch in flaring nights with mournful eye, and shuddering hear what monsters still we grow. and all the crimes of men oppress me so i call for vengeance to the angered sky. wrathful as prophets went in holy writ, i walk with haggard cheek in public places, confessing sins that i do not commit. and the pharisees cry out with upturned faces: "i thank thee, god, that i am not as this infamous poet by thy judgment is!" "et eritis sicut dii." sick artist, from the world around thee shrinking to nurse the high ideal of thine art, give thou no place to nature in thy thinking, that foolish, fertile slut obscene and stinking- to the artificial consecrate thy heart. in spite of reed-pipes and loud songs of marriage, be thou remote, reality desert, the blood and flesh of women proud of carriage, the flabby flesh of women thou disparage, deny their beauty which is only dirt. are thy tired spirit and thy parched mouth aching for the cooling, carnal draught of their caress? this is a thirst that thou canst best be slaking, swooning among thy lamp-lit bottles, breaking the odorous seals of drunken dizziness. dream drunk with rum, whose tropic-heated spices ferment into a scented wine that joins thy subtle spirit in voluptuous vices with negro women whose smooth flesh entices thy lubric hand to their anointed loins. drink kirsch, as turbulent as cascades shaded by forests where the maidens bathe their feet; musked maraschino, sucked by mouths pomaded in the sick air of brothels golden-braided by those who queen it on the yielding seat; and, hypocrite with ice one cannot sunder out of his flame, drink kümmel, whose bright feast of boreal snow-masked fire evokes the wonder of roses under snow, o roses ... under archangel heavens women of the east. and, for its green of bindweed-tangled fancies, drink absinthe, which shall open out to thee those forests where the fairy vivien dances, and the sage merlin with her feet entrances in the hoarse brushwood by the bitter sea. then to thy reeling brain shall dreams come sailing, upon the calm bed where thy body sank, and thou shalt see dissolved in shadows paling, all earthly things around thee, failing, failing, while brighter surge the visions rank on rank. behold! among the wan blue vapours, steaming before the scented, sounding sunrise, glows a belt of glaciers whose thin peaks of dreaming mirrored upon an azure lake are gleaming in the tropic valley guarded by their snows. the leaves of mangoes, palms, and fig-trees sighing are wafting coolness o'er the billowing grass, where, garlanded like flowers, are women lying, bathing their lily limbs, beneath the flying jewels of furtive humming-birds that pass. and a cascade of dazzling nakednesses falls from the peaks of glaciers in shoals, and every following body holds and presses the one that went before, holds and caresses; a living stream of beauty rolls and rolls. arms, loins, and thighs are linked and intertwining, lightnings are playing on a vaporous mesh of luminous hair and supple limbs combining, and from the lofty peaks of glaciers shining for ever falling are new waves of flesh. drink every drop of this pure wine, and waste in thine embraces all these limbs unreal. lie in thy bed of snow, and, undebased, enjoy all flesh in thine own flesh, and taste the monstrous joy of soiling the ideal. vengeance. woman with heart stabbed by a hidden wrong, whose vengeful fingers, proud, and tapering long, have strapped thy naked lover in his sleep down to the bed, where now his wild eyes weep their scalding tears like vitriol, and stare on broken furniture and carpets where weapons, clothes, flowers are in mad medley cast, in sheets still with his kisses warm, thou hast to soldiers prostituted thee, and spent their vigour with thy body's vehement surging of spasms quivering under them; but what thought, like a hideous diadem of thorns, hath rent thy forehead, when the third, his white flesh scarcely sated, having heard thy lustful moaning till his heart grew sick, looked, as a bitch looks beaten with a stick, to the black, frantic face of thy betrayer, and asked with plaintive murmur: "shall i slay her?" the song of the forges. o frenzied forges with your noise and blaring, red, reeking fires that comb dishevelled skies, your hollow rumbling is like stifled swearing, and the grassed earth about you burns and dies. when blind, mad man, intent on gain and plunder, thinks he is matter's master, in your maw lugubriously rolls a hollow thunder, that says: we forge and forge, without a flaw, the chains from which thou hast not wit to save thee, o foolish man! we rivet link by link the shackles which for ever shall enslave thee. sweat, pant, and fill the furnace to the brink, throw in the coal, and pour the crackling casting through the cut sand, beat, crush the pig to shape, temper the sword, sheet, deck, and rig with masting the tyrant ships that sweep the sea with grape, crowd with machines the hamlet and the haven, to prison thee more deep than dungeons held in durance making thee a pauper craven... stupid humanity! we weld and weld with the vile toil disease beyond reclaiming, and imbecility, and discontent, murder, and hate that sets the mansion flaming, bloody revolt and heavy punishment. we forge the fate of every generation; we crush the father and the child as well, spitting at heavens that shake with consternation the soot and coal of our relentless hell! see! to the stainless blue of skies upcurling our towering chimneys' belched, polluted breath, above the waste and ravaged lands unfurling their sable flags of slavery and death! hermaphrodite. rosy and naked, pure as a flower divine, the mystic being of old stories sleeps, stretched in the grass like a bough of eglantine, in the flowery clearing in the forest deeps. upon his folded arm he rests his head; the sleeping kisses of the sun repose upon his delicate body softly spread, and shimmer from his shoulders to his toes. and near him, with a murmur as of bees, runs the clear brook through grass and lily flowers, under the fig-trees' laden boughs, and flees, winding along the tangled secret bowers. sweet sorcery of the flesh! a sphinx above thee asks the thrilled senses to resolve desires! with shame and terror tremble all who love thee, and they who see thee burn with thousand fires. seeing thy more than human loveliness women and youths their envious glances dart; they sigh with lowered eyes, and weep, and press sometimes their hand upon their maddened heart. "where is the heavenly goddess," so they cry, "whose loveliness can match thy perfect frame? and what young god, all sun and spring, can vie with all this freshness blent with tender flame?" o to drink madly on one mouth the kisses of aphrodite and adonis both, and, trembling, to discover all blent blisses in the same frame to no perversions loth! faust had left margaret for thee, and lewd anacreon had never lost a day on bathyllus, sappho would not have pursued in her escape erinna, no nor phaon. under thy foot earth lapped with pallid flames trembles, and all the flowers die where it hovers man clips no more the woman, and hot dames enlace their arms no more around young lover o last ideal of decaying races, mortal revealer of best beauties, thy poisons poured lavishly in thine embraces have made the ancient cities rot and die. and now to us thou comest, while uncloses under thy feet a dawn that pales the day's; and poets, mad with incense and with roses, laud thee with chants of glory, love, and praise. sweet being, grant to us thy sweetest blisses! we drag ourselves under thy conquering feet, while, in a downy drunkenness, thy kisses gather our last and loveliest heart's beat. the days of yore. i have inhaled love like a garland sprent with morning dew, and fragrant with a scent that set my kisses fluttering over it, as butterflies of silk and velvet flit. and savoured it like some fruit from the south, whose luscious pulp melts slowly in the mouth. and, cups of sapphire effervescing bright, blue eyes have made me drunk with spring's delight! and, ruby cups brimmed with a blood that seethed, lips have a dizziness upon me breathed!... --fall o'er the past, ye mists of memory! and now, thou deep, swart night envelop me! in thy wan winding-sheet my heart enfold, to sleep alone, and motionless, and cold. valère gille. 1867--. art. what use is action? we have thought until the world is but the shadow of our dreams. what if the sap in all the gardens teems, sunk back upon itself is our limp will. the mind has ravaged space, and we are ill with what we know; yet knowledge only seems, upon life's verge a net of cheating gleams; and my possessions leave me tired and chill. but thou alone, o torch of sacred art, with first, primeval beauty warm the heart, and flash thy multiple glimpses of the ideal; and thou, o poet, make lost eden shine within us, and behind the seeming real show us the essences of things divine. thermopylæ. the sombre gorge is only lighted by the bucklers on the beeches. near their chief the warriors, with no fear and with no grief, await their fate. and now the dawn is nigh. to-morrow greece shall mourn them: they must die. the priests have read the auguries like a leaf. hydarnes, with the footstep of a thief, slinks with his traitor where the shadows lie. so be it. under arrows showering thick by shadows shielded they will fight, beneath the overhanging rocks, with pike and teeth. and when the sword breaks they will grip the stick. they share a few figs for their breakfast, right calmly. they with pluto sup to-night. a naval battle. the fleets rush headlong o'er the sea, and lock in a loud, long impact deafening the ear; the hissing arrows make the heavens blear, the heavy waves are clashing shock on shock. ares is with us, driving like a flock the persian ships which, when they staggering rear, the rostrum pierces till, in mad career, they crowd the shore and shatter on the rock. the dusk climbs, but the most illustrious chase the coward, and thrust from every vantage-place. but now the moon breaks through the clouds, to show our native land kissed by its tender ray, the glittering summits and the silvered bay, and the free sea flowered with corpses of the foe. albert giraud. 1860--. the tribunes. the people have had masters whose strong faces, charged with imperious will, their masses cowed, who spoke with regal voices ringing loud to draw out of their sleep lethargic races. the word they cast down from the market-places in the four winds of heaven vibrated proud with bitter love and majesty unbowed, threatening to make of cities desert spaces. the crowd remember yet their magic names, and echo them with thunderous acclaims of welcome to the coming victory. the legendary marble where they stand rises on history's threshold, and their hand wrathfully sways the billowing days to be. cordovans. you leathers red with autumn's, victory's dyes! in some old oratory's night you blaze, where sleeps the heavy splendour of dead days; you with your hues of epic, evening skies, mysterious as fiery meres of gold, you dream of those who trailed their swords, and bowed above your cushions stamped with wafers proud their gashed, tanned faces in the days of old, with an odour of adventure in their capes. red leathers whom the peace of hangings drapes, you are like tragic sunsets, worn were ye by legendary heroes, who enriched the kings they served, and all the world bewitched, and who upon a copper, kindled sea, you cordovans dyed deep with war and pride, embarked in summer cool of eventide! you are chimerical with gathered lives; of new americas you guard the gleams, you sunk in dazzled and vermilion dreams, in you the soul of ancient suns survives! florise. richly mature, upon the bed of joy strown with crushed flowers, florise bends lovingly her heavy-lidded great eyes o'er the boy whom she has made man ere his puberty. fair as a sunset that on roses lingers, sweet as the wind is he in lilac-trees. with gratitude he fondles the deft fingers that guided him into love's mysteries. heavy with glad fatigue, their senses thus dream, but breaking off their amorous embrace, as though a cry she would withhold, she feels her heart within her pale, and presses her face upon the pillow, for she guesses her too young lover sees her growing old. hecate. the moon has a kiss that clings like those of cold women whom minions with fertile womb drive from the bed of kings. she weeps her white distress on spires, and lays a sheet of suppliant light at the feet of crosses pitiless. but breaks her prayer, which is vain, and raises herself again, in pale and barren pride; and casts, with the cruel glance of her lidless eye, far and wide hysteric radiance. in the reign of the borgias. in the gilt palace where young slave-girls show like bunches of gold grapes their breasts erect, in a soft room with burning drapery decked, the conclave's end illumes a golden glow. near pages who their yellow hair have smoothed, and whom the evening's kisses feminize, sit, red as lava in their gorgeous dyes, the roman cardinals, by music soothed. they worship flesh; and the unnatural, thinned voices of eunuchs quiver o'er their napes with a thrill of pleasure like the lust of rapes; and roman girls dishevel in the wind, in the fantastic, smoky night of porches, their manes of fire like wildly streaming torches. absorption. woman, my longing to be nothing clings to thee, whose stagnant eyes are pools of night, liquid indifference, where is no light save the kaleidoscope of imaged things. thy sable hair, so sultry and so fresh, when i untie it, billows o'er thy shape like evening's shadow o'er a pale landscape, and slowly eats the whiteness of thy flesh. the sapid kiss of thy rich-moulded mouth falls, with no impulse known, and with no sound, as ripened fruit falls heavy to the ground, in the slow silence of the autumn's drouth. as into water i descend in thee; and i am cradled vaguely on thy breasts, which are as white as billows' foamy crests, and heave above thy breathing like the sea. thy cadenced walk is like old liturgies; it trails with royal rhythm its broad verses, and with grave grace before mine eyes rehearses all the gregorian chant's solemnities. o save me from my murderous dreams, thou bright bosom of silence, mouth that sates the sense, urn of oblivion, pillow of indolence; annihilate me in thy bosom's night! my weakness by thy savorous strength is nursed, and in thy gaping love absorbing me i taste the time when all i am shall be in nature's vast and flowering corpse dispersed. the youth among the lilies. in the voluptuous room of lilies, made as a deaf ear by the unhealthy shade of vinous tapestry wherein ferments the sunset, drunk with church and censer scents the dying dauphin, with his woman's slow eyes, sees at his feet the ermine snow of the hushed carpet, and the oriel's slit sifting a trembling glimmer on to it of lying lilacs and of faëry roses, and the pale youth his heavy lids uncloses and sees upon the heaven's crimson rim women whose lifted breasts call unto him. resignation. i have fought against myself, i have cried in pain, writhed breathless in my wounded spirit's night, and with my life in rags, a piteous sight, i come out of the hell which is my brain. i know full well to-day, my dream was mad; my love of autumn was a crime, no doubt; and like a nail i tear the yearning out that my too simple heart for childhood had. my cross! lance in my side! i bring to you this verse like christmas evenings white and calm, when the sovran palpitation of the palm hovers against the heaven's freezing blue; this verse whereinto all my grief shall pass, verse of a man resigned, misunderstood, verse into which my love must shed its blood, long bleeding, like a sunset on stained glass. voices. voice of my weeping blood, voices you of my flesh, my panting, frantic flesh, o pensive voices, louder than when a surging crowd rejoices, hush! lest the dear, dead past should bloom afresh! be silent, you long voices! memory closes on velvet voices, voices of flowers of old that dreamt in her flesh and sang in her voice of gold; voice of lascivious jasmine and moss roses, be silent! hush my sorrow and my shame! into my heart silence and winter came: silence is snowing into my heart's dark vast. snow, snow, o silence! spread your cool above hell's roses, cover up their fires at last, and in the shadow slain my only love. victor kinon. 1873--. the resurrection of dreams. it is as warm as when the lilacs' scent is with the fragrance of magnolias blent, when you can hear the seeds crack in the ground, when first your face and hands are summer-browned when every now and then in heavy drops the rain begins, and all as sudden stops.... slate and rust clouds voluptuously mass their bulk o'er the green corn and nibbled grass of fields that billow to yon purpled woods, which, through bronzed clouds, a sheaf of sunbeam floods. sweating, i climb the slope, where, like a long white ribbon, runs the brook and sings his song. a noisy cock pursues a clucking hen. a sparrow flies with bits of hay. and then such is the silence you can hear from far, where the red roof-tiles of the village are, the heavy, steady humming of the bees ... (can there be blossoms on the willow-trees?) here is the wood.--pale with surprise you see the ardent silence and the mystery whose sap swells in the branches which it studs with downy catkins and with sticky buds. under the elm-trees' violaceous shade the fresh anemones have snowed the glade; the undergrowth bathes in a fawn half-light; the pure air crackles with a lizard's flight; and there, where on the hazel bough is poured a ray of sunshine darted like a sword, a trembling cloud of yellow pollen rises.... and now mysterious mirth my heart surprises with words and cries of love and tenderness, and an intoxicated glow and stress, because the spring with legendary dyes, the white of snow and blue of paradise, and tender green of leaves all dewy sprent, with nightingales, and honeysuckle's scent, and chafers hanging heavily from blue lilacs, wet with rosy diamonds too, with the clear crystal and mad pearls that gush out of the beak of quail and pairing thrush, all the divine, forgotten spring reminds my heart of ardours where the pathway winds!... i love! my breast is full of flowers and birds! i shall break out in ecstasy of words! i love!--but whom?--i care not whom nor how! i love, with all my blood in frenzy now, and all the sighs that heave my breast, the maid who smiling comes beneath her cool sunshade.... midnight. the earth is black with trees of velvet under a low sky laden with great clouds of thunder. the gnomes of midnight haunt the dark, whose ears, with luxury veiled, hear as a deaf man hears. one is uneasy in one's stifling sheets, and so uneasily the poor heart beats that, bathed in sweat, at last you leave your bed, and as in dream about the chamber tread. you throw the window open. not a sound. surely the wind is swooning on the ground, and listening to some holy, mystic birth preparing in the entrails of the earth. you listen, earnest, to your heart's loud shock beating with pained pulsations like a clock. then to the window-sill you pull a chair, and watch the clouds weigh down the helpless air over the gardens whence, in sick perfumes, exudes the sweat of trees and wildered blooms. hiding from the world. shall not our love be like the violet, sweet? and open in the dewy, dustless air its dainty chalice with blue petals, where the shade of bushes makes a shy retreat? and we will frame our daily happiness by joining hearts, lips, brows in rapt caress far from the world, its noises and conceit ... shall we not hide our modest love between trees wafting cool on flowers and grasses green? the gust of wind. i closed my window, lit my lamp, reclined my temple on my hand, and sadly thought: "now let me read, and dream, and rest my mind ... but, o my god, my heart is so distraught! yet, let me read." it was a traveller's book. o sailing on broad rivers, on whose shore are baobabs and mangroves, while the song of curious birds wafts with the ship along, together with the tiger's grating roar.... a sudden gust of wind the window shook, followed afar off by continued whining. i throw the window open wide, to look into the night, and see, with white teeth shining in mocking grin, death pass upon a steed with yellow teeth, making its wet flanks bleed with spurs of bone, and in the wind its mane tossing, together with his winding-sheet; see death, while all the trees moan out in pain, race under clouds lit by a livid sheet, and brandishing above him his bright scythe! afar, italian poplars curve their slim and parallel trunks beneath the wind of him; dishevelled willows in the shadow writhe, and the earth, looking at the monster, pants.... now he is swallowed by the raucous squall. long i stand gazing at the rise and fall of foliage broken by a rending sob, when suddenly the wind, with hollow throb,- lugubrious present from the reaper!--heaves into the room a flight of withered leaves. the setting sun. the stainless snow and the blue, lit by a pure gold star, nearly meet; but a bar of fire separates the two. a rime-frosted, black pinewood, raising, as waves roll foam, its lances toothed like a comb, dams the horizon's blood. in the tomb of blue and white nothing stirs save a crow, unfolding solemnly slow its silky wing black as night. charles van lerberghe. 1861-1907. errant sympathy. from some unknown horizon, wafted from far away, fraternal sympathy flies on the scented breath of the may. now dreamers in cloudland turrets, and maidens ripe with the time, up the white steps of their spirits feel loves invisible climb. they know not from what glances, in the pensive peace of the hour, there are unknown lips in their fancies opening with theirs in flower. so keen and kind the bliss is, that their foreheads, younger made by these intangible kisses, guard dreams that never fade. the garden inclosed. _fulcite me floribus._ dear is thy bandage, love, to my heavy lids that it closes; it weighs like the sweet burden of sunshine on frail, white roses. i walk as to voices that call, i seem over waters to hover, and every wave, like a lover, folds round my feet as they fall. who has unloosened my tresses, as through the dark places i came? girdled with unseen caresses, i plunge into billows of flame. my lips, where my soul is crooning, open in rapt desire, like a burning blossom swooning over a river on fire. * * * * * _dormis et cor meum vigilat._ my hands lie for my breasts to soothe, of playing and of distaffs tired; my white hands, my hands desired, seem asleep on waters smooth. far from futile, waste repining, on this my beauty's throne, frail, calm, gentle queens reclining, my royal hands dream of their own. and while mine eyes are closed, and still is the golden hair my breast that robes, i am the virgin holding lilies, i am the infant holding globes. * * * * * _si floruit vinea._ in mulberry time they sang my lips that yield to keen caresses, and, like the rain upon the summer field, my long, warm tresses. in time of vintaging they sang mine eyes, mine eyes half-closed, veiled by tired lids and lashes unreposed, like autumn skies. i have all gleams and savours, i am supple as a bindweed in hedgerow bowers, my breasts are curved as flames are, or a couple of sister flowers. * * * * * _ego dilecto meo et dilectus meus mihi._ when thou dost plunge into mine eyes thine eyes, i am all within mine eyes. when thy mouth unties my mouth, my love is nothing save my mouth. when thy fingers lightly touch my hair, i am not if it be not there. when they touch my breasts at any time, like a sudden fire to them i climb. is it this which is to thee most dear? here my soul is, all my life is here. * * * * * _in a perfume of white roses_ _she sits, dream fast;_ _and the shadow is beautiful as though an angel there_ _were glassed._ _the gloam descends, the grove reposes;_ _the leaves and branches through_ _on the gold paradise is opening one of blue._ _a last faint wave breaks on the darkening shore._ _a voice that sang just now is murmuring._ _a murmuring breath is breathing ... now no more._ _in the silence petals fall...._ * * * * * the angel of the morning star came down into her garden, and he spake to her: "come with me, i will show thee many a lake, valleys delightful, secret forest bowers, where still, in other dreams than ours, the subtle spirits wake of the earth." she stretched her arms, with laughter looking between her lashes on the angel flaming in the sun, and, when he moved, in silence followed after. and while they wandered to the groves of shade the angel round her laid his arm, and set among her bright hair longer than his wings the flowers he gathered dewy wet upon the branches over her. the temptation. _shapes that coiled in the woods and waters,_ _glittering sons and radiant daughters._ --d.g. rossetti. a silence softened the declining day, a moan, and then a love-sigh died away. apples were falling one by one between the grasses warm and shadows emerald green. the sun sank down from branch to branch; a bird singing among the stirless leaves was heard. a scent of soft and swooning blossoms strayed, like a slow sea-wave, through the deepening shade. and, to hear better her who comes, with bent eyes, as in dream, and heart to meet her sent, by paths where never sound the silence jars, voluptuous evening, in the heated air, with hands of subtle and accomplice care, spread the insidious net of oblique stars. art thou waking? art thou waking, my perfume sunny, my perfume of gilded bees, art thou floating along the breeze, my perfume of sweet honey? in the hush of the gloam, when my feet roam through the rich garden-closes, dost thou tell i am coming, thou smell of my lilacs, and my warm roses? am i not like in this gloam a cluster of fruit concealed by the leaves, and by nothing revealed, save in the night its aroma? does he know, now the hour is dim, that i am half opening my hair, does he know that it scents the air, does its odour reach to him? does he feel i am straining my arms? and that the lilies of my valleys are dewy with passion-balm that for his touching tarries? all of white and of gold. all of white and of gold are the pinions of my angels; but love hath pinions changing. his sweet wings are turn by turn the colour of purple and roses, and the crimson sea where uncloses the kiss of the sun. the beautiful wings of my angels are very slow, and open closed. but the agile wings of love are impatient, and like hearts never rest. the rain. the rain, my sister dear, the summer rain warm and clear, gently flees, gently flies, through the moist atmosphere. her collar of white pearls has come undone in the skies. blackbirds sing with all your might, dance magpies! among the branches downward pressed, dance flowers, dance every nest, all that comes from the skies is blest. to my mouth she approaches her wet lips of strawberries wild; she has touched me with a mouth that smiled, everywhere at once, with her millions of little fingers. on a lawn of sounding flowers, from the dawn to the evening hours, and from the evening to the dawn, she rains and rains again, she rains with might and main. then the sun with golden hair dries the bare feet of the rain. at sunset. at sunset, swans of jet, or fairies sombre, come out of the flowers, and things, and us these are our shadows. they advance: the day retreats. into the dusk they go, with a gliding movement slow. they gather, to each other call, seek with noiseless footfall, and together all with their wings so light make the great night. but the dawn in the sea awakes and takes his torch, then he climbs gleam by gleam, climbs in a dream. out of the waves arise his tresses fair, and blue eyes. at once, as they were blown away, the shadows flee. where? who can see? into the earth? into the sea? into a flower? into a stone? into us? who knows? their wings they close, and now repose. it is the morn. a barque of gold. in a barque of the orient maidens three are coming back, maidens three from the orient are coming in a barque of gold. one is black, her hands the rudder hold, on her curving lips with their essences of roses she brings to us strange stories, in the silence. one is brown, she holds the full sail down, and on her feet are wings, an angel's mien to us she brings in her motionless bearing. but one is fair, at the prow she is sleeping, as from the rising sun her hair the wave is sweeping, she brings us back in her eyes so bright all the light. lilies that spin. now in this april morning, sweet with folded shadows and doves cooing, the dear child with her shy conceit what is she busy doing? the blonde trace where her footsteps go is lost in the grated garden's alleys; i do not know, i do not know the meaning of her cunning sallies. with a long gown down to her heel, pensive and slow, with a silent gesture upon the sun at a white wheel she is spinning a blue linen vesture. and with blue eyes of bridal bliss smiling at her dream that glances, weaving golden foliages among the lilies of her fancies. grégoire le roy. 1862--. the spinster past. the old woman spins, and her wheel is prattling of old, old things; as though to a doll she sings, and memories over her steal. the hemp is yellow and long, the old woman spins the thread, bending her white, weary head over the wheel's lying song. the wheel goes round with a whirl, the yellow hemp is unwound, she turns it round and round, she is playing like a girl. the yellow hemp is unwound, she sees herself a girl, as blonde as the skeins that whirl, she is dancing round and round. the wheel rolls round with a whirr, and the hemp is humming as well, she hears an old lover tell and whisper his love for her. her tired hands rest above the wheel, its spinning is done, and with the hemp are spun her memories of love. roundel of old women. little old women, my thoughts, the snow falls from the vast, death and uncertainty palls all the things of the past. why is my heart so chill under these skies overcast, in these winters that last and last, these winters calm and still? you little old women who glean, make a bonfire of your past, of your reeds snapped by the blast, and of all your barren dreams. all that your sorrow remembers, burn it like dry brushwood, and sit and warm your blood over the dying embers. and mumble in grief and dejection of the happy days of your youth, and empty with fingers of ruth the spindles of blue recollection. and when the cottage is damp with the weeping of the night, one of you will light, like a shaded, smoky lamp, --oh! why must i weep and perish, and nothing, nothing forget?- the best of memories yet, the memory of her you cherish. hands. glued like the eyes of a thief at my heart's window-pane, gazing in, were two pale hands, hands of grief, hands as of death, bone and skin. i shivered to see them stare, weird as the moon in the blue, lifting to me their despair, as the hands of the damned might do. and he of those desolate hands, who was my visitor grim? death on my threshold stands, since i gazed on the hands of him. it was not a blessing they shed, curst of a truth were they, for i have longed to be dead, since i saw their ghastly ray. for the wine of my loving is sour, and full of tears and of harm, and deadens the bread of the hour that is signed with their fatal charm. hands of poison! hands of despair! gestures of virgins of gloom! you have shone on my house as a pair of candles a corpse illume! i have seen hope close her door, and my mourning is watching death, while the north wind is blowing o'er my candle dead in his breath. my eyes. poor eyes, you lamps that are failing, how little remains of your glow? encroaching night is veiling the things of the here-below. or is your gathering gloaming indifference alone? o eyes that once went roaming to beauty and the unknown! you sink your lids like a curtain, when love goes by, a flame; you know your sorrow is certain, and age to you is shame. and yet, my heart's best praising, o flameless lamps, is for you; through you my spirit gazing first saw, and felt, and knew! you showed me the mountain steep, with the sea and the stars above, and all that my life is deep with: my child, and death, and love. my hands. my poor hands, so wan and faded, agile once as a bird, my rhythms of speech you aided, and by my brain you were stirred; poor wrinkled hands, like two old women worn and wizened, my thoughts run on, but you in listlessness are prisoned. yet i bless you, my hands, now that strife is done, and the heart reposes; you taught me the touch of roses; and the caresses of life. all the hands you touched, hands of brothers, and of women i loved in dole, and the faithful hands of mothers: i bear you yet in my soul. silences. there is an age, sad age, and hour obscure, when man, aweary of adventurous dreams, turns from the far horizon's lure his eyes towards the inn of good repose. then simple thoughts and staid, like an eager, humble serving-maid, with delicate cares discreet lull infinite regrets to sleep, and kindle in the heart once more the fire of memories of the yore, and from the hearth drive hopes importunate, that one by one may steal within the great silences. the silence of our memories whereon already falls the snow of years; love's silence, whose abandoned tomb no tender hand makes bloom; silence of hopes long seeking, which have died like beggars in the ditch; silence of faith, whose torch has been put out by life and doubt. these silences our brothers, in they glide, like white monks, rigid, stern, and sit down, without speaking, at our side.... then we with truth sojourn. ere they had come we saw but of the world its flowers and orchards pasturing our eyes, but, when they entered in, our deeper souls explored, together with our thought, the night. one of life's secrets each of them reveals, one of fate's shadows each of them dispels, and they can tell us whether we have walked along the road where god's hand pointed us. our friends, our children, all whose life seemed bound together with our own most intricately, we see them far, alone in the great fight waged with infinity, and pain, and death. we thought that their hands which our hands have clasped, and the long gazing of our eyes in theirs, and that our voices uttering one thought, and all our common hopes and self-same griefs, and all our evenings lived beneath one lamp, and all those hours upon one dial told, the self-same clock of destiny- sealed our converging fates for evermore! now suddenly we are alone, so far from life that we can scan the vast expanse that separates us and divides us all. these pure child's eyes, these beautiful fondled hands, these voices intertwined like woven flowers, have touched perhaps, and recognized each other, but like to friends, or strangers almost, who to-morrow will resume their separate way. and now that silence from us far removes the lies of love for which our senses longed, lo, in the universe our soul is lost! the child of our own blood, who, piously, some last, last night will come to close our eyes, how he is one, his fate how otherwise than ours, how far removed, and how alone! he enters life! he is no more our own! thus shall they go towards the call, till, lonely and despoiled of all, naked and poor we face the eternal hour! and, seeing our heart as a temple with no god, and closed our soul to every new delight, empty our hands, and in our eyes no sight, we shall make question of ourselves: what tie unites this lowest, lamentable thing we are ... to immortality? maurice maeterlinck. 1862--. the hothouse. o hothouse in the forest deeps! and your doors for ever closed! and all there is beneath your dome! and under my soul in your analogies! the thoughts of a princess who is hungry, the weariness of a sailor in the desert, a brass band at the windows of incurables. go to the wannest corners! you think of a woman fainted on a day of harvest, there are postillions in the courtyard of the hospital; afar goes by a hunter of elks, become a nurse. look around in the moonlight! (o nothing here is in its place!) you think of a mad woman before her judges, a man-of-war at full sail on a canal, birds of night on lilies, a knell at noon, (down yonder under these bell-glasses!) a halting-place of sick men on the moorlands, an odour of ether on a sunny day. my god! my god! when shall we have the rain, and the snow and the wind in the hothouse! orison. pity my absence on the threshold of my will! my soul is helpless, wan, with white inactions ill. in tasks abandoned stands my soul with sobbing pale, o'er shut things its tired hands tremble without avail. and while my heart breathes out bubbles of lilac dreams, my soul is wafted about in a wax moon's watery gleams; in a moonlight where glimmer the lorn lilies of the to-morrows; a moonlight where nothing is born but its hands in the shadow of sorrows. hot-house of weariness. o weariness blue in the breast! wedding the better sight, in the weeping, wan moonlight, of my blue dreams with languor oppressed! this weariness blue evermore, where through the deep windows green, as in a hot-house are seen, with moon and with glass covered o'er, the mighty forests undying whose nightly forgetfulness, like a dream motionless, on the roses of passion is lying; where rises a slow water-beam, mingling the moon and the sky in a glaucous, eternal sigh, monotonous as a dream. dark offering. i bring my poor work, which is like the dreams of the dead, and the moon on the fauna rich of my remorse is shed: with swords my wishes crowned, violet snakes that creep through my dreams and enlace in my sleep, lions in sunshine drowned, lilies in far waters green, closed hands that never shall ope, red stems of hatred between sorrows of love without hope. pity the song, lord god! and let my sad prayers rise, while the scattered moon on the sod keeps night at the rim of the skies. the heart's foliage. under the blue crystal bell of my reveries tired and ill, my griefs intangible grow gradually still. plants of symbols thronging, lilies of pleasures of old, the slow palms of my longing, bind-weeds soft, mosses cold. alone in the centre of them, one rigid lily heaves its frail and pallid stem over the dolorous leaves. and in the gleams that it pours, like a gradual moon, towards the bare blue crystal heavens, soars its mystical white prayer. soul. my soul! o my soul too sheltered verily! and these flocks of my desires in a hot-house! waiting for a tempest on the meadows! let us go to the most feverish patients! they have strange exhalations. in the middle of them, i cross a battlefield with my mother. they are burying a fallen comrade at noon, while the sentinels are eating their repast. let us go also to the weakest: they have strange perspirations! here is a sick bride, treason on the sunday, and little children in prison. (and further on, through the vapour,) is this a dying woman at a kitchen's door! or a sister shelling peas at the bed's foot of an incurable? and last of all let us go to the most sad: (last of all, for they have poisons.) o! my lips accept the kisses of a wounded one! all the _châtelaines_ have died of hunger, this summer, in the turrets of my soul! here is the daybreak entering the festival! i catch a glimpse of sheep that stray on quays, and there is a sail at the windows of the hospital. there is a long road from my heart unto my soul! and all the sentinels are dead at their post! one day there was a poor little banquet in the suburbs of my soul! hemlock was being mown one sunday morning; and all the virgins of the convent were watching vessels passing on the canal, one day of fasting and of sunshine, while the swans were pining under a poisonous bridge; they were pruning trees round the prison, they were bringing medicines one afternoon in june, and meals of patients were being spread at all the horizons! my soul! and the sadness of it all, my soul! and the sadness of it all! lassitude. these kisses know no longer where to rest, for blind and cold the eyes were they caressed; henceforth asleep in splendid reverie they watch dreamily, as in the grass dogs may, the grey horizon-herded sheep-folk graze upon the turf the moon's dishevelled rays, kissed by the sun, dark as their life is dark; indifferent, without an envious spark for pleasure's roses under them unclosing; and this long, green, ununderstood reposing. tired wild beasts. o laughter and passion-sighs, and sobs that the sick breast heaves! sick and with half-closed eyes among dishevelled leaves, my hate's hyenas slouching, my sin's yellow dogs, and, large, at the weary, pale desert's marge, the lions of love are crouching! in a listless dream they lie, and, languid and oppressed, under their colourless sky they watch, and shall without rest, temptation's sheep together, or one by one, depart, and in the moon at tether the passions of my heart. lustreless hours. here are old desires marching past, dream after dream reeling by, dream after dream failing fast; hope's days are doomed to die! to whom must we flee to-day! no star to show us whereto; but ice on our hearts grown gray, and in the moon linen blue. sob after sob is trapped! fireless the sick in the city, the grass of the lambs is lapped in snow, sweet saviour, pity! but i, till the sleep is done, await, i shall waken soon, i wait for a little sun on my hands iced by the moon. the hospital. hospital! hospital on the canal! hospital in july! there is a fire in the room! while ocean liners blow their whistle on the canal! (o! do not come near the windows!) emigrants are crossing a palace! i see a yacht in the tempest! i see flocks on all the ships! (it is better to keep all the windows closed, one is almost sheltered from the outside.) it is like a hot-house on snow, you are going with a woman's churching on a stormy day, you have a glimpse of plants shed o'er a linen sheet, there is a conflagration in the sun, and i cross a forest full of wounded men. o! now at last the moonlight! a jet of water rises in the middle of the room! a troop of little girls half open the door! i catch a glimpse of lambs on an island in the meadows! and of beautiful plants on a glacier! and lilies in a marble vestibule! there is a festival in a virgin forest! and an oriental vegetation in a cave of ice! listen! the locks are opened! and the ocean liners stir the water of the canal! o! but the sister of charity poking the fire! all the beautiful green rushes of the banks are on fire! a vessel full of wounded men rocks in the moonlight! all the king's daughters are in a bark in the storm! and the princesses are going to die in a field of hemlock! o! do not leave the lattices ajar! listen: the ocean liners still are blowing their whistle on the horizon! some one is being poisoned in a garden! people are banqueting in the house of their enemies! there are stags in a town that is besieged! and a menagerie amid the lilies! there is a tropical vegetation in a coal-pit! a flock of sheep is crossing an iron bridge! and the lambs of the meadow are coming sadly into the room! now the sister of charity lights the lamps, she brings the patients their meal, she has closed the windows on the canal, and all the doors to the moon. winter desires. i weep for lips whose brief red no kisses hath known, and for longing left to moan in a reaped, rich harvest of grief. the rain must pour and pour! or the snow is thick on the sward, while crouching wolves do ward my threshold of dreams evermore, and watch in my soul ever sighing, with eyes in the past nigh dead, all the blood that of old was shed of lambs on the hard ice dying. only the moon with its chill, monotonous sadness lights, while autumn the thin grass blights, my longing with hunger ill. roundelay of weariness. i sing the dirges pale of kisses lost and cold; on love's thin grass i behold weddings of them that ail. in my slumber voices sing; how nonchalant they are! and in streets without sun or star lilies are opening. these things my heart desired, these flights that backward fall, are the poor in a palace hall, and in the dawn candles tired. at the grim night's threshold i launch mine eyes far out, and know that the moon, with its linen slow and blue, my dreams will stanch. burning glass. ancient hours i behold under regrets ripening, and fairer flora spring from their secrets' azure mould. desires blow through my spirit. o glass upon my desires! and the withered grass my soul fires, when breathing memories stir it. it grows with my thoughts for mould, and in the blue fleeing fast i see the griefs of the past their flower-petals unfold. my soul through memories gropes, feels the touch of their curtaining dead mohair; and greens with other hopes. looks of eyes. o these looks of poor, tired eyes! and yours and mine! and those that are no more and those that shall be! and those that never shall arrive and those that notwithstanding do exist! some seem to be visiting the poor on a sunday; some are like sick people with no home; some are like lambs in a meadow covered with linen. and these unusual looks! there are some under whose vault are people watching the execution of a virgin in a closed room, and some that make one think of unknown melancholies! of peasants at the windows of a factory, of a gardener who has turned weaver, of a summer afternoon in a museum of waxen images, of the thoughts of a queen who watches a sick man in the garden, of an odour of camphor in the forest, of shutting a princess up in a tower, some festal day, of sailing for a whole week on a warm canal. pity all those who come out with short steps like convalescents at harvest time! pity all those who look like children gone astray at meal-time! pity the eyes of the wounded man who looks up at the surgeon, his looks like tents under the storm! pity the looks of the tempted virgin! (o! rivers of milk are going to flee in the darkness! and the swans are dead amid the serpents!) and the looks of the virgin who succumbs! princesses abandoned in swamps without an issue! and these eyes wherein vessels in full sail vanish lit by the tempest! and the pity of all these looks which suffer with not being otherwhere! and all the sufferings indistinct and yet diverse! and these that never any one will understand! and these poor looks nigh mute! and these poor looks that whisper! and these poor stifled looks! here in our midst one thinks one is in a castle which serves as a hospital! and so many others look like tents, lilies of war, on the convent's narrow lawn! and so many others look like wounded men being tended in a hot-house! and so many others look like a sister of charity on an ocean liner where there are no sick! o! to have seen all these looks! to have taken all these looks into oneself! and to have exhausted mine in meeting them! and henceforth not to be able any more to close my eyes! the soul in the night. my soul in the end is tired; tired of her sad, sad state, and of being undesired. sad and tired i await your hands upon my face. i await your pure hands, still as angels of ice might be, till they bring the ring to me: on my face your fingers chill, like a treasure under the sea. i await their healing deep, not to die in the sun, to die without hope in the sun! they wash my burning eyes, where so many poor ones sleep. where so many swans on the sea, are stretching, lost on the main, their necks morose in vain, where along the gardens of winter, the sick break roses in rain. i wait for your pure fingers yet, like angels of ice are they, i wait till mine eyes they wet, the withered grass of mine eyes, where the tired lambs are astray! songs. i. into a cave the maid she threw, a sign upon the door she drew; the maid forgot the light, the key fell down into the sea. she waited while the summer went: more than seven years she was pent, every year a stranger passed. she waited while the winter went; and while she waited, waited yet, her hair the light could not forget. it sought the light, and found it out, it glided through the stones about, and lit the rocks that held her pent. one eve again a passer-by, he knew not what the radiance meant, and dared not come anigh. he thinks a portent is foretold, he thinks it is a well of gold. he thinks the angels are at play, he turns aside, and wends his way. ii. and if he come back some day, what shall be said to him?- one for him waited, say, until her eyes grew dim.... and if again he spake, and did not know me more?- like a sister answer make, he might be suffering sore.... and if he would be told where you are dwelling now?- give him my ring of gold, and bend your silent brow.... and if he miss the clock's tick, and see the dust on the floor?- show him the lamp's burnt wick, show him the open door.... and if his last he saith, and ask how you fell asleep?- tell him i smiled in death, for fear lest he should weep.... iii. three little maidens they have slain to find out what their hearts contain the first of them was brimmed with bliss, and everywhere her blood was shed for full three years three serpents hiss. the second full of kindness sweet, and everywhere her blood was shed, three lambs three years have grass to eat. the third was full of pain and rue, and everywhere her blood was shed, three seraphim watch three years through. iv. the maids with the bandaged eyes (do off the bands of gold) the maids with the bandaged eyes are seeking their destinies.... went in at the noon of day (keep on the bands of gold) in at the gate went they of the palace of prairies gray.... life saluting then, (tie close the bands of gold) life saluting then, they never came out again. v. the three blind sisters, (let not our hope grow cold) the three blind sisters have their lamps of gold. into the tower they climb, (we, you, and they) into the tower they climb, wait till the seventh day.... ah! said the first one, (still hopes the heart, and fights) ah! said the first one, i can hear our lights.... ah! said the second, bending, (they, you, and we) ah! said the second, bending, it is the king ascending.... nay, said the saintliest, (still be our courage stout) nay, said the saintliest, our lights have all gone out.... vi. the seven virgins of orlamonde, when the fairy had passed away, the seven virgins of orlamonde, sought the gates of day. have lit the wick of their seven lanterns, have opened, flight by flight, the door of full four hundred chambers, but have not found the light ... they come unto the sounding caverns, go down, with courage cold, and in the lock of a closed portal find a key of gold. through the chinks they see the ocean, they are afraid of death, dare not ope, knock at the portal, with bated breath. vii. she had three diadems of gold, to whom did she give them? does one unto her parents bring: and they have bought three reeds of gold, and kept it till the spring. gives one unto her lovers all: and they have bought three nets of silver, and kept it till the fall. one she to her children brings: and they have brought three iron rings, and chained it up the winter long. viii. towards the palace she came- the sun was scarcely rising- towards the palace she came, the knights all gazed, surmising, silent was every dame. she stopped before the gate- the sun was scarcely rising- she stopped before the gate; they heard the queen descending, and the king questioning her. where are you wending, where are you wending? one scarce can see, take care- where are you wending, where are you wending? does some one wait for you there? but she made answer not. she came down towards the stranger,- take care, one scarce can see- she came down towards the stranger; the stranger kissed the queen, no word did either say, but went straightway. the king at the gate was weeping;- take care, one scarce can see- the king at the gate was weeping; they heard the queen departing, they heard the leaves down-sweeping. ix. you have lighted the lamps,- o! the sun in the garden! you have lighted the lamps, the sun through the fissures slants, open the gates of the garden! the keys of the doors are lost, we must wait, we must wait always, the keys are fallen from the tower, we must wait, we must wait always, we must wait for other days ... other days shall open the doors, the forest keeps the bolts, around us burn the holts, it is the light of the dead leaves, which burn on the doors' thresholds ... the other days are wearisome, the other days are also shy, the other days will never come, the other days shall also die, we too shall die here by and bye. x. i have sought for thirty years, my sisters, where hides he ever? i have sought for thirty years, my sisters, and found him never ... i have walked for thirty years, my sisters, tired are my feet and hot, he was everywhere, my sisters, existing not ... the hour is sad in the end, my sisters, take off my shoon, the evening is dying also, my sisters, my sick soul will swoon ... your years are sixteen, my sisters, the far plains are blue, take you my staff, my sisters, seek also you ... georges marlow. 1872.--. women in resignation. on your poor hands pierced by the nail, with hope's long clinging, the old women have rested their cold souls without feeling and frail, in the hush you are dreaming in this night, good lord! and they sing to the prodigals wandering in the wildernesses of sin: they are saying, these voices in pain, they must suffer long until the heavenly dawn shall fill their songs with brightness again, that since you have wept above the sins of the mad human race, they must wash with tears their face, and pray to you long in love. on your poor hands pierced by the nail, with hope's long clinging, the old women have rested their cold souls without feeling and frail. souls of the evening. while the spindle merrily sings, old women sing your complaint, the gas-lamps are misty and faint, and the night to the water clings. now jesus walks where greens the dark, cobbled alley, and rests his poor, pierced hands on the breasts of dreaming magdalenes; and of every orphan child, and of houses holy with prayer, mary mother has care ... sing, jesus meek and mild stands in your doorways' gloom, and hears your hymn beseech ... let the honey of his speech your desolate hearts perfume!- the shepherd of straying sheep shall lead you home to the fold ... but your soul, old women, must weep, remembering its wounds of old, love, and the heart's long burn, the wounds of hope ever sick, and childhood's dreams falling quick, shed and dead turn by turn. lord, on old women have pity, whose soul, fair fragile toy, touched by the kiss of the city, dreams of the sun of joy! albert mockel. 1866--. the girl. slender, and so virginal, but why not somewhat languid?--her casque of golden hair is starred sometimes with mellow sparks, and mellow is her mauve silk dress soft in its folds. she is all music, in the music of her movements bathed, they also soft with pensive grace, and very slow with suppleness that undulatingly unrolls. an evening party. she has danced, she dances still. men dark and fair have come and led her off, under the chandeliers in this insipid music,--insipid, and amusing her. much has she danced (o all this light!) and feels a little weary, weary. yes, several waltzes; of her partners one could talk, or nearly could;--but he is ugly, and his fish eyes middle-class. the other, on her programme next, is far more handsome, surely: his keen eyes have metallic glints, his hair is glossy black; he is italian, is he not, or else from hungary? ah! here he comes. two heads incline, she takes an arm: they waltz. this waltz, it rolls with a voluptuous rhythm, in harmony with the rhythm of the girl, like convoluted masses, musically vaporous and very heavy, volutas without end and curve on curve. they dance, their curves leave traces of caresses in the air, their undulations are a most lascivious music. she? she is very tired, she has no strength as on her cavalier she leans! her thought is vague, so vague along the twining curves, vague in volutas without end, and with the contours of their curves. these curves are turning round lasciviously; she thinks no more, she turns, she turns, she undulates in air and in the music's kisses, tickled by something drunken, by this air which brushes her, this ball:--she shivers. now nothing more, her eyes see nothing; things that turn, vague things, volutas vague without an end, and curves that drag her on in velvet rhythms. but all the things around her turn too vaguely, too vaguely cycles turn barbaric, mad; all of it turning, turning; and if she look again she will be sure to fall!... the waltz continues and lasciviously rolls, rolls in the dizziness of turning things, mad cycles, and all this softness, curves that languish fit to swoon! feverishly and to flee the crazy dizziness of all these vague and circumambient things, as if to save her life she keeps her look on him.--he plunges his deep down into the great vague eyes before him, until he sets them shuddering ... this man, his eyes are shining; strangely beautiful, they shine with gleams fantastic, and from their fluid comes perverted charm, burning and dominating, almost animal, and with a glaucous glint that troubles her ... this well-nigh bestial look upon a somewhat pensive, handsome face.... and it is she, she ... ashamed, in spite of all her dizziness, she takes away her eyes from him who seeks to conquer her. but all is turning, all these things, these vague things turning, turning o too much! she shuts her eyes to see them not, she could not open them again, the rhythms bear her onward crossing one another, brushing some lascivious curve again, the vagueness, o such vagueness of the crazy cycles and lascivious curves that ravish her. delicate titillation like a feather's sudden touch electrifies her, half-fainting and surrendering she floats like flotsam on his arm; this arm, that like a very soft and powerful billow bears and cradles her; sweetly, irresistibly caresses her, bearing her onward, circling her with a voluptuous embrace, and ... no, no! his eyes through her closed lids she feels them, and their glaucous flame that pierces, conquers her. this glaucous look, this virile and determined look, it weighs upon her, haunting the soft eddyings of the waltz,--and is not this a breath that brushes her, the stifled warmth of a desiring breath, man's breath on her neck.... but the waltz bears her on in whirling, vague, voluptuousness. * * * * * the song of running water. "the light that my embanking meadow laves over me like a purer billow glides. naked in its limpid and transparent waves, it is the magnifying image wherein i am the diaphanous shadow of the sky. o beam!... o dream of fire that fills me ... he, my heroic vow that with emotion thrills me, comes!... but when his flame has lapped me wholly, from over me he rises, fleeing slowly, and in my being i can hear a being die. beautiful is the forest, whose o'er-leaning leaves temper my languid heat, stripped by the wind of gold he strews, and myriad leaves are from each other singled, dancing to fall upon their glancing selves, and playfully to emulate the frivolous deceit of a bird's pinion with my waters mingled. breezes, trills of songbirds warbling with a breast that wells, all that lives and makes the forest ring retells the melody i murmur to my tall reed-grasses, aery music that its spirit glasses. o forest! o sweet forest, thou invitest me to rest and linger in thy shade with moss and shavegrass dressed, imprisoning me in swoon of soft caresses that o'er me droop thy dense and leafy tresses. but on i glide, i go, and, fretful, pass under thee, gliding away my life forgetful. the evanescent soul, the soul where thou wert glassed, fades, and leaves my sealed eyes nothing of the past. far away from me are gone all the glimpses that upon me shone. to other forests and to other lights, shaking my hair from fall to fall, from spate to spate, i glide with hands untied, and empty-eyed, with endless hours that fetter and control my fate. wandering shadow of a reverie banked and pent, sister of all those whom my waves entrap, intangible as a soul, and, like a soul, unfit to seize, i roll garlands of scattered memories, whose scent dies in a bitter sap. and neither who i am nor whence i am i know ... under my fleeting images lives but one being, that winds with all my windings whither they are fleeing ... o thou whose tired feet i have bathed, and heavy brow, and the caress of avid hands,- o passer-by, my brother listening to me now!- hast thou not seen, from the waste mountains' threshold to my far sea-sands, born and reborn in me, strong as the whipped flood-tides of love's emotion, the broad, unbroken current rolling me to the ocean? hast thou not seen, force without end, immortal rhythm and rhyme, desire impelling me beyond the bounds of time?" the goblet. every hand that touches me i greet with kisses welcoming, caresses sweet. thus in my crystal's naked beauty, i- with nothing save a little gold as on my lips a dye- give myself wholly to the mouth unknown that seeks the burning of my own. queen of joy,--queen and slave,- mistress that taken passes on again, mocking the love she throws to still desire, i have blown madness at my pleasure's will to the four winds that rave. say you that i am vain? list! i am feeble, scarcely i exist ... yet listen: for i can be everything. this mouth, that never any kiss could close, capriciously in subtle fires it blows, the jewelled garlands of a shadowy blossoming. tulip of gold or ruby, dense corolla of dark purple opulence, stem of a lilial diamond flowered upon a limpid pond that nothing save the beak of wood-doves troubles, i am sparkling, i am singing,--and i laugh to see, ascending in this colourless soul of me, as might a dream, a thousand iridescent bubbles. for the lover drunken on my lips that burn, whether he pour in turn the wines of gold and flame or love's wave to my rim, drinks from my soul for ever strange to him a queenly splendour or the radiance of the skies, or fury scorching where the harmful ruby lies in the bitter counsel of my jealous topazes. and, tears or joy, delirium, daring drunkenness, from all this passion that to his is married nothing of me will gush unto his arid lips, save the simple and the limpid light whose gleam is wedded to my empty chalice. what matter? i have given desire his cloudland palace, and on my courtesan's bare breast love lets the hope of his diaphanous flight languish, and softly rest ... and i laugh, the fragile, frivolous sister of eve! for me in nights of madness drunken hands upheave higher than all foreheads to the constellated skies, and then i am the sudden star of lies, that into troubled joys darts deep its radiant gleam- the sweet, perfidious happiness of dream. the chandelier. jewels, ribbons, naked necks, and the living bouquet that the corsage decks; women, undulating the soft melody of gestures languishing, surrendering ... and the vain, scattered patter of swift words ... silken vestures floating, faces bright, furtive converse, gliding glances, futile kiss of eyes that flitting round alight like birds, and flee, and come again coquettishly; laughter, and lying ... and all flying away to the strains that spin the frivolous swarm around. lo, here the burning beauty of a rose has fallen ... and feeble in its wasted grace it lies, exhaling its bruised loveliness, the while, like love among the smiles, it dies. eddying skirts, gay giddiness ... the festival is closed. while somewhat of uneasiness still palpitates, no void subsists of vanished voices; and nothing on the stained boards has remained except a stem, a chalice,--once a rose. but the forgotten chandelier, whose grandiose soul unto the eyes of beauty dedicates its glorious sheaf of fires without a goal, in halls deserted charms the solitude that nascent morning sheds his pure breeze o'er and the dawn weaves afar its threads of light. * * * * * know you that in the orient, simple, earnest, bright, she whose burning soul immortal shows arises ... o light! down yonder, in the deeper solitude, she who is born, and dies, and is renewed. life passionately rises under the sky! the fleeing wave has mirrored in its sheen the young smile of the golden morn, that comes across the plain where wheat and rye grow green, and with the blonde dawn intertwine ... behold: consumed under the ruby shine in which its glory's arid flame exhausts itself, the chandelier is paling at the breath of death, and burns its throes out in the face of the sun. the angel. some one here has gone to sleep. while yet the sun is at the heaven's rim, under the shadows of domed ilex crests, innocent, tired, upon the happy grass he rests, and the shadow, scarcely moving over him, prolongs around his sleep the hem of night. who is this child thus dawning on our sight? is it to any one among you known whence comes this adolescent, white traveller, who has halted with us in the night? comes he from seas afar, where islands are? or from unkempt forests, or from sterile plains, whose vastness never any man has dreamt? naked and white is he. the stones that clot the road, his feet and knees have wounded not; there is upon his brow something we dread ... whence comes he, with his beauty dight, he who has halted with us in the night? his hair is spread like a wave of light; his closed hand holds a flower unknown; and all his white of an enchanted thing is like a cloud-scape doubly shown in waters mirroring. o brothers, take care that his sleep ye do not break! but what a snow is this that trembling gleams frail on his flank, and buries him in our sight? and these strange beams, that like a white and scintillant raiment drape his limbs in folds of light? o brothers! i have seen ... it is a wing ... look ye: this is, immortal shape, an angel slumbering. in the light morn, where the holm its shadow flings, the wanderer adown heaven's azure steep has closed his mystic wings: an angel here has gone to sleep! never a movement quivers to trouble the transparent, limpid air: not a leaf shivers ... it is an angel sleeping there. what silence! o what calm without an end! whence did the stranger unto us descend? did he, a weak, frail enemy advance before the one who strikes, and wills us prone? or were there monsters to be overthrown, some day of courage blind, pierced with his lance, and then his wing grazed death? but no, for with a smile his mouth uncloses; and in the silence he reposes. o let us whisper! let the shadow's dome lengthen the hour of sleep with its fresh gloam. perchance his soul loved space, but tender and human still, grew weary of the bare and arid splendour of unvaulted air, and all this sun-swept ether limitless ... sad was his heart one day, feebler his soul, his brow too heavy; and, without a goal, wandering through deathless radiance loathing it, he closed his eyes above the dizzy vast of love, and, keeping at his flank his shamed wings, down floating, on the earth alit. but when, awakening, to his feet he springs, angered, his resistless wings will soar and fly, resounding through the azure they devour; and, virgin, with a supernatural, clear cry, he in the dawn will fade, in the infinite hour, like the keen dream that darts through cosmos deeps, when a flaming meteor leaps, and lights the worlds between. the man with the lyre. no man knows whence, from very far, came a man who bore a lyre, and his eyes were as bright as a madman's are, and he sang a song of fire to the short strings of his lyre, the love of women, and vain, languishing desire, upon his lyre. his lyre was frail, and flowered with roses pale; and so sweet rose the voice of his breath, that as far as a man's eye wandereth, from the mountain to the vale, from the valley to the forest, from the forest to the plain, ran the young men, and the lasses sprang to hear the dulcet strain of pain he sang. "he's a proud man," said all the men. "like a soul speaking is this voice of his, so sad and tender, fit to make you swoon, his voice is like a woman's kiss!"- "ho!" they said--said all the lasses then- "he is a lover, with his lyre! sweetly he speaks, so sweetly with his lyre, we fain would weep, and would be dying soon...." but now the singer's voice has changed, he sings upon the long chords of his lyre the deeds of men, and dukes, and kings, warring afar from ophir to cathay, and over all the earth in great array, and weapons shocked by which the soul is rocked,- and golden oriflammes spread to the breeze's breath to celebrate the joy of life in death. "o!" the men, "alas!" the lasses said, "we understand no longer what you say. your voice that soared, like any wing freed but now from the great paradise, has gone,--perhaps more proudly hovering,- we know not in what country now it flies." "o!" the men, "alas!" the lasses said. and children, string by string, cried under dazzled skies. now for his grave man's voice the singer tries the greatest chord of all the lyre. and to the gravest chord of all he saith hope that for very youth soars in a breath, and stretching like a wakened beast desire.... and lo! already, by the willows of the river, beautiful joy who passes binding crowns turns her aside. and suddenly tempestuous grief rings far and wide, its strength awakening from the mystery of the chords dream-voices that deliver.... and lo! our fists are clenched and leaping towards death's iron gates, and bruised recoiling thence. "holla!" the men said; and the lasses laughed. "holla!" the men said, "surely he is daft! he sings, he comes we know not whence; what would he have from us? we have no pence." (and the lasses laughed.) "follow," the lasses said, "the werwolf we have started." and men and maids stoned him with pebbles of the way, and, twining arms and waists, so glad and gay, singing and laughing, all departed, laughing and singing, laughing all the way. * * * * * but now the solitude is moulding a long music folding and unfolding. is it an unseen angel's touch? as in the grey silence might a phantom shape's, that comes, unrolls its raiment, and escapes, a voice flees, when the breeze has touched and passed, and glides within the singing chords.... as a light wind sings at a vessel's mast, the sweet breath mounting from the river towards the singer, binds a chant on the lyre's chords. it is a wing wrinkling the wave, and in it glassed: it is the vague word moving nature through and through, and which the human lip shall never speak.... and now it bears a soul into the blue; and of a sudden all the melody rings out with such a grave accord towards the skies, that in the radiant deeps of space the chords, magnified, no man can fathom how, have brushed god's viewless brow! song of tears and laughter. two women on the hill-side stood, where the long road winds through the wood, at dusk of day. one of them laughs, a-laughing glad and gay, one of them sings, mocking all grisly care; the other moans, and sighs in her despair, the other sobs, crying her heart away. "ho!" (says the one) "sweet glides the breeze, my drunken heart upon it flees...." the other moans, "the wind blows chill, my heart is o! so sad and ill." one told her story to the grass-green hill: "years and years gone my husband went from me, (upon the breeze my laughter bounds and blows!) he went to sail upon the doleful sea, and god knows he has slain his thousand foes. but let the drunken breeze be blowing strong, he will come back with april's sun ere long, and we shall laugh at troubles o'er and done, counting the golden booty he has won." so glad and gay, she laughs and sings her song. and the other moans in sorrow broken-hearted; the words are broken in her voice that grieves. "the wind groans; my soul with sorrow heaves; my lord, my lover he is far departed! his flesh with mine was one, his soul and mine were blent. and yet one day from me he went, and on my lips held out in vain, like a drop hung on the rim of passion's cup filled full for him, is trembling still a kiss i gave not back again. far, far away, upon the bloody plain, (o! in the wind the wailing wild of pain!) perchance he fell and now he dies,--or some woman has with her love his heart o'ercome, some woman's eyes have robbed my happiness ... with pain and love my heart is all forlorn; i hear my sorrow and the wind's distress blent in the baleful bluster of the corn. i know! another woman's kisses sever his heart from mine! but what is this disgrace to me, the flesh of his flesh now and ever? let him come back! i languish for his face. let him come back to where his truelove lies, and every day my tears for him shall race down on my pale hands from my withered eyes." "ho!" says the one, (a-singing glad and gay), "thy tears are at the wind's will borne away. see, in the valley greens the gracious spring; the warbling bird is gladdening the leaves! o let the breeze blow far thy voice that grieves, for the breeze is come, with perfumes on his wing and the meadows bloom under the april rain. laughter! i know no more of tears and pain." "ah!" says the other, "woe and lackaday!" "o!" says the one,--and laughing wends her way. two women on the hill-side stood. and now, from the far fields and near the wood, two wounded men come trailing up the way. no standard waves its joy before their face, no sturdy mule is bearing their array. alone, and slowly, up the path they pace, and, drop by drop, blood marks their every trace. and of a sudden crying from the brant, the blended voices of two women pant;- and the wind may moan, and laugh the breeze, for grief and joy mingle their ecstasies. "it is my husband! god, scarce liveth he ... (my laugh is stifled dying in the breeze!) alas! it is my husband, fainting, bruised, drop by drop his blood has oozed ... curst be the hour my husband went from me! curst, curst be god who hears and sees!" two cries of women, fury and caress, cry without hope and cry of happiness ... "it is my lord, alive, my lover dear ... (my tears are dried, and on the breeze they flee!) o it is he indeed! my lord is here, bruised, wounded, pitiful, with panting breath, but loyal to my heart that quivereth ... blest be the day gives my true love to me!" and the wind may moan, and sing the breeze ... for joy and grief have blent their ecstasies. for mirrored in the evasive wave appears a double brow; an angel sleeps beside the waking angel; from the plaint that died thanksgiving soars; and, mingling smiles with tears, days with black jewels gem a diadem for glittering night whence death comes unto them. the eternal bride. i have dreamt thee kind, and dreamt thy careful eyes, sister unknown, eternal bride of mine. wife of my thought, i have bent my mouth to thine, and slowly thou hast spoken,--in this wise: "i flash, i glitter, i fade. enjoy my love ere it flees, but seek not where i have strayed, my trace is like sand on the breeze. my kiss falls on thy face.... but i am unseen, a shade that passes ... my kisses fade like a wing that flits through space. listen, and think! i am she who opens thine eyes in dream. i am the wonderful beam of a mystery unveiled to thee. i am hot as the sun at heaven's steep, and more than smoke i am light; and i glide through the odours of night to visit thee in thy sleep." the bride of brides. o thou who hauntest my nights, spectre of time, immense, voiceless, eternal shadow, monster for whose feet we hark, and peer for thy marrowless bones in vain through the darkness dense, i know thou art near me ... i tremble, and wait for thee in the dark. o shame! am i stricken with terror? absolve with the calm of thy scorn my soul that is dizzily whirling under thy piercing eyes! yet once my forehead fancied, in its tender and radiant morn, that folded into thy bosom every sorrow dies. i have hated thee in my terror, o priestess of time, o death. thy fathomless anger swells and rolls a mournful sea, and the flesh in the shock of thy billows writhes, and with stifled breath cries through the din of thy laughter, crying unto thee.... but come! ... o bride of embraces twined like an octopus! i give to thy greedy heart a valiant and quiet heart,- since it is true that love soars out of death as does a lily out of a coil of encircling serpents dart. georges ramaekers. 1875--. the thistle. rooted on herbless peaks, where its erect and prickly leaves, austerely cold and dumb, hold the slow, scaly serpent in respect, the gothic thistle, while the insects' hum sounds far off, rears above the rock it scorns its rigid virtue for the heavens to see. the towering boulders guard it. and the bee makes honey from the blossoms on its thorns. mushrooms. whether with hues of corpses or of blood,- phallus obscene or volva as of glue- in the rank rotting of the underwood, and those that out of dead beasts' bodies grew, fed by the effervescence of poisonous putrescence, flourish the saprophytes in mould and must. plants without roots and with no leaves of green, souls without faith or hope--they thrust protuberances rank with lust, inert, venene. and if there is not death in all of them, it is because some sect among them breeds from less putrescent wood fallen from the stem of the living tree whose severed bough still feeds. in the autumnal thicket, thinned along its mournful arches by the wind, no longer to dead twigs but sapwood quick, corrupting trunks that time left whole, the reeking parasites in millions stick, like to the carnal ill that gnaws the soul of those who at the feet of women fawn. and hell has blessed their countless spawn. and though they cannot reach the surging tops of the unshaken columns of the church, in spreading crops the parasites with poison smirch and mottle with strange stains the fruits the monstrance ripens in the groves of rome. trusting that ancient orchard's sainted roots, whoever of the leprous apples eats shall feel his faith grow darkened with a gloam that filters heresy's corroding sweets. more hideous than saprophytes, and therefore for the sacrilege more fit, upon the corn and vinestock sit minute and miserable parasites; and o'er the eucharist their tiny bellies, to cat and crimson it, have crept. their occult plague has for three hundred years eaten the very hope of mystic ears, wherever the christian harvester has slept. and while, in the land of heavy, yellow beers, in the brewing-vat of barren exegeses some new-found yeast for ever effervesces, the saints whose blood turns sick and rots, waiting till a second nero shall for their cremation light a golden carnival, behold their bodies decked with livid spots. georges rency. 1875--. what use is speech? what use is speech, what use is it to say words that without an echo die away, and only leave vain sadness after? all a forest of shadow rings with laughter, if thou but move thy hand to grasp at life! my love, the path on which we laugh with life pales in a doubt befogged with roads that leads not thorough; the night is triumphing with stars, towards to-morrow! in the night, thou sayest, shadowy terrors fall. be undeceived, there is no night: there is only multiform, enormous light, and the stars are there, for thee to be drunk withal! the source. our feet kiss where the source is glistening in the glad gloaming softening the trees. its waters murmur mysteries to the breeze, and we in ravishment are listening. the leaves are paling in the twilight chill: a mystic something in the air is swimming; our eyes with happy tears are over-brimming; and now the source grows timid, and is still. the shadow makes the world so fair and frail; wouldst thou not, like a banner on the gale, be fain to shake thy heart out tenderly?- but no, say nothing: silence is a veil for fervent thoughts that utterance only mars. let us sit hand in hand, and converse be without a word under the peace of stars. the flesh. o carnal love, life's laughter! under these free eden skies and on these blossomed leas, thy kiss is on these budding lips of ours. the high grass is all gold, the drunken flowers voluptuously languish, every one, feverish as the earth is with the sun. my heart leaps like a beast of light, and rears and madly o'er the royal road careers, where my desires' processional altars are. your flesh is quivering and to mine replies, dearest, and glassed within your great pale eyes is heaven immensely blue and deep and far. kiss me! the hour is sweet, and pure our kiss. the deathless boon of living sings in us. let us with ravishment delirious possess each other, and in infinite bliss be born again, knowing life's mysteries! fold me and fill me with your hot caress, o human goddess naked, exquisite! i am drunken with your dazzling loveliness, o queen of grace and beauty dowered with your young budding flesh so marvellously pure! fernand séverin. 1867--. the chaplet. _fiumina amem sylvasque inglorius_.--virgil. my forest, winter's captive, i have seen softly awakening under warmer breezes: in bluer air my forest shimmering green wafts down the wind the scent that in its trees is. an olden happiness, and yet unknown: trembles my simple heart, these things beholding with pearls of dew the burgeoned boughs are strown trembling, this morning hour, my woods unfolding, o muses! if so passionate a love survive these leaves in songs of mine that please ye, seek not to soften to the wrinkles of my brow the oak's or laurel's bough uneasy. the leaves were quivering open, frail as flowers! o! let the light bough of this foliage, shining with the cold tears of night's imprisoned hours, for ever be mine idle brows entwining! re manlier brows by prouder fillets swathed! but i would live renownless, lonely-hearted, and to those virgin haunts return unscathed whence my child's soul hath never yet departed. the lily of the valley. i feel my heart for ever dying, bruised by all the love it never will have used, dying in silence, and with angels by, as simply as in cradles infants die, infants that have no speech. o god-given heart, guarded by vigilant seraphim thou art! no thing shall soil thy natal raiment! thou, rest thee content with no kiss on thy brow, save of maternal summer eves, and die in thy desire and thy virginity. thy sacrifice hath made thee shy and proud; thy life with very emptiness is bowed. made to be loved, loved thou shalt never be, though many maids would stretch their arms to thee, as to the prince who through their fancies rides. alas! and thou hast never known these brides; to thee they come not when calm evening falls, the pensive maids to whom thy longing calls; and thou art dying of thy love unused, poor sterile heart, my heart for ever bruised! sovran state. in nights impure moans one with fever stricken: "lord! let a maiden bring me, for i sicken, water and grapes, and quench my thirst with them. spring water! fruits of a virgin vine! and let her fresh and virgin hands lie on the fret of my king's brow burnt by its diadem." o pitiful crown upon a head so lowly! does the unquiet night allegiance show thee? thou king of beautiful lands that never were. "o stars among the trees! o waters pale! comes the expected dawn in opal veil? pity the tired and lonely sufferer: and grant me, lord, after the night out-drawn, the sleep and boon of thy forgiving dawn; and let thy chosen heart no longer bleed!" but answer makes the lord in stern denial: "leave thou, for nobler verse, to pain and trial thy heart, the open book the angels read." the kiss of souls. you who have died to me, you think you live! living, your squandered gems and lilies shed! but since the dream you were is fugitive, love, calm and sad, whispers that you are dead. she that you were survives in dreams: i press her virgin hands, i hear the vows she swears. hath not this evening that old loveliness? i seem to breathe the blossoms that she wears. hearts had been beating long before they spoke, but eyes had speech, and tender voices ringing, docile to love like perfect lyres, awoke the forest's wondering echo with their singing. a lovelier and a lonelier evening came; the sun behind the breathless forest set. who was it hushed our voices? for in shame we bent our eyes down that by chance had met. the treasure of our hearts this one deep look delivered up! our secrets were in this one look exchanged that our two spirits took, and wedded in their first and only kiss. her sweet voice. her sweet voice was a music in mine ear; and in the perfume of the atmosphere which, in that eve, her shadowy presence shed, "sister of mystery," trembling i said, "too like an angel to be what you seem, go not away too soon, beloved dream!" then, smiling as a mother will, she seized my brow, and with soft hands my fever eased. "still, thou poor child, this childish fear of me? thy forehead furrowed by sad memory, are these a shadow's hands that on it rest? a bright may morn is dawning in thy breast: is it a phantom's voice that soothes thy grief? but if my beauty be beyond belief, breathe its terrestrial odour! part my hair, and take my veil away and make me bare! thou canst not soil my wings, nor stain the snow of these frail flowers that in my garden blow; come, in so fair an evening, spend the treasure of my veiled loveliness in thy heart's pleasure." thus sang the tender voice that needs must fade! and in her kiss the soul was of a maid. but night came from the rim of autumn skies, came from the forest's shallow, evil eyes. the refuge. this is mine hour. night falls upon my life. i must forego my part in men's keen strife. with conquered step resigned i reach the door, beloved too late, where none awaits me more. an autumn shudder through the clear, cold sky runs, interrupting the monotonous cry shed by a horn astray and desolate, making me, languidly, smile at my fate.... but all is said. naught moves me, in the gloam, save the uneasy hope of this dear home. she lives; my heart, and not mine eye, foresees. the sweetness of the moon, spread on the trees, veils more and more this happy nook with peace and mystery that bids foreboding cease; a counsel of forgetfulness is cast around me, something pensive, good, and vast. and every step i take the more it thrills my soul which yet that ancient quarrel fills. but what shall summer storms betoken, when she breathes the autumn calm she longed for then, and only trembles feeling memories stir of hearts that loved her well and wounded her. nature. slow falls the eve; the hour is grave, profound. the sweet, sad cuckoo makes the air resound with his two notes with springtide languor filled; and the tall pines, by eddying breezes thrilled, tremble, as ocean echoes in a shell. else all is hushed. i walk with heart unwell. slowly the shadow on my path descends. i loiter o'er familiar forest bends, whose calm grows deeper with the darkening west, o such a calm i feel my own unrest melt in the peace of landscapes unforeseen; and in the east eve clothes with azure sheen the slender uplands with their billowing chain, whose silhouettes shut in the distant plain; and on their tops their cloak of forests gleams through the thin veil of mist that o'er them streams. and all is vague, the ideal form of things shimmers divine in deep imaginings, gladdening the eye with grace ineffable; seeing them, in the enchanted world we dwell of soulless, happy beings who possess the calm we cry for of forgetfulness, we who desire in desolate hearts that pine, this sovereign gift of peace that makes divine; and most at eve, when quiet nights of spring enchant the sky, the forest, and the ling. the forest's darkness sways me at its will; and with a holy and unfathomed thrill i feel a dizzy longing grow in me: o not to think! nor wish! o not to be!... the humble hope. time goes, poor soul, and sterile are thy vows. after our outwatched nights and feverish brows, what do we know, save that we nothing know? even as a child a butterfly will chase, far have i strayed in many a flowering place, and here i tremble in the afterglow. yet not despairing in my feebleness, but hoping that the master still will bless the will to do good that my efforts show. eleonora d'este. does thy heart, tasso, burn for thy princess? strive to refine this obscure tenderness, of which she can accept the flower alone. save it make nobler, i no love can own. certes, among the gifts that fate bestows, and the least lovely, as a poet knows, some are an offered prey that passions take. but there are others which, if seized, do break; and of these supreme gifts love is the best. if thou indeed dost love me, 'ware thee lest thy heart forget the reverence it owes, then may it love, and in love find repose. the thinker. o thinker! thou whose heart hath not withstood, for the first time, spring's beauty in the wood, and who thyself wilt therefore not forgive, thy days have passed in pondering o'er the great enigma man proposes to his fate, and books from life have made thee fugitive. what boots? leave to the gods their secret yet, and, while thou livest, taste without regret the sweetness of this simple word: to live. a sage. he knows dreams never kept their promise yet. henceforth without desire, without regret, he cons the page of sober tenderness in which some poet, skilled in life's distress, breathed into olden, golden verse his sighs. sometimes he lifts his head, and feeds his eyes, with all the wonderment that wise men know, on fields, and clouds that over forests go, and with their calmness sated is his thought. he knows how dearly fair renown is bought: he too, in earlier days of stinging strength, sought that vain victory to find at length sadness at his desire's precipitous brink.... of what avail, he thought, to act and think, when human joy holds all in one rapt look? his mind at peace reads nature like a book. he smiles, remembering his youth's unrest, and, though none know it, he is wholly blest. they who are worn with love. when, worn with unregenerate delights, the kisses of fair youths grow dull and sicken, they seek, fatigued with hope and outwatched nights, a bed of love that shall the senses quicken. white bed of love with pillows rich with lace, caressing curtains sheltering dreamless blisses, and, to grow better from the bought embrace, upon their wasted brows long trembling kisses. calmer than autumn heavens the eyes they crave, in which the bitterness of theirs shall vanish, lips of a speech impassionate, suave, which their sick sorrows shall assuage and banish. love should be night, and hushed forgetfulness, never with follies of the past upbraided, hope still renewed consoling the distress of dreams come true and in fulfilment faded. nor light, nor noise; but in the happy room, with tapestry the walls to sleep beguiling, to kiss the long hands of the mistress whom a plain gown clothes, and who is faintly smiling! once they have seen her, and to hear her speak they hoped for her and heaven, and knelt before her; but love's old burden makes their soul so weak that save with sighs they never dare implore her. the centaur. oft on my rural youth i dwell in fancy. ye gods who for our deepest feelings care, if fields and forests evermore entrance me, it is because you set my birthplace there. with what a love up-welling sweet and tender upon the august face of earth mine eyes lingered, and drank her solitary splendour, bathed in the radiance of calm summer skies! all was excitement! valleys richly rounded; the undulating, broadly breasted hills; the vast plains which the veiled horizon bounded, lit by the silver flash of restless rills. but you, ye forests, filled me most with craving! the pang i felt still to my memory cleaves, when i beheld your endless tree-tops waving, as underneath the wind the ocean heaves! and at your wafted murmuring, i, to capture your reachless vast, my arms would open dart, crying in sudden, overpowering rapture: "the world is less immense than my own heart!..." do not accuse of pride, o nature! mother! my fleeting youth. not vain was my unrest: of all thy mortal sons there is no other hath strained himself more fondly to thy breast. the summer sun has scorched my skin, and daring has chiselled on my face its stubborn force; in foaming floods i bathed, my body baring; and on the mountains braved the tempests hoarse. all manly pleasures that our being fashion in the rough shock of elements uncouth, all of them i have known with headlong passion; with lust of struggle pulsed my arduous youth. intoxicating was the zest that thrilled me. what matter if i let the fervour seize my quivering soul? the bitter joy that filled me whipped and exalted me, and left no lees. for i had dreamt all phases of existence! all that was frail and pent in me with scorn i cast aside, and looked towards the distance where dawned the fate for which my mind was born. was it a vain dream? o you centaurs smiting with roving hoofs your rocks and herbless sods, o you whose shape, a man's and beast's uniting, shelters a secret fire that makes you gods! you who quaffed life with its abundance drunken! your transports i have known in olden days, in evenings when, like you in silence sunken, i drove along the darkened forest ways! in me, ye savage gods, your strength was seething; and, when a sacred madness through me ran, in the pent breath the foliage was breathing i deemed me one of you, i mortal man. émile verhaeren. 1855--. the old masters. in smoky inns whose loft is reached by ladders, and with a grimy ceiling splashed by shocks of hanging hams, black-puddings, onions, bladders, rosaries of stuffed game, capons, geese, and cocks around a groaning table sit the gluttons before the bleeding viands stuck with forks, already loosening their waistcoat buttons, with wet mouths when from flagons leap the cork teniers, and brackenburgh, and brauwer, shaken with listening to jan steen's uproarious wit, holding their bellies dithering with bacon, wiping their chins, watching the hissing spit. their heavy-bodied hebes, with their curving bosoms in linen white without a stain, are going round, and in long jets are serving wine that a sunbeam filters through the pane, before it sets on fire the kettles' paunches the queens of tippling are these women, whom their swearing lovers, greedy of their haunches, belabour as befits their youth in bloom, with sweating temples, blazing eyes, and lolling tongue that keeps singing songs obscenely gay, with brandished fists, bodies together rolling, blows fit to bruise their carcases, while they, with mouth for songs aye ready, throat for bumpers, and blood for ever level with their skins, dance fit to split the floor, they are such jumpers, and butt their dancer as around he spins, and lick his face in kisses endless seeming, then fall with ransacked corsage, wet with heat. a smell of bacon fat is richly steaming from the huge platters charged with juicy meat; the roasts are passed around, in gravy swimming, under the noses of the guests, and passed around again, with fresh relays of trimming. and in the kitchen drudges wash up fast the platters to be sent back to the table; the dressers bulge, crowded with crockery; the cellars hold as much as they are able; and round the estrade where this agape in glowing red, from pegs hang baskets, ladles, strainers, and saucepans, candlesticks, and flasks. two monkeys in a corner show their navels, throning, with glass in hand, on two twin casks; a mellow light on every angle glimmers, shines on the door-knob, through the great keyhole, clings to a pestle, filters through the skimmers, is jewelled on the monster gala bowl, and slanting on the heated hearthstone sickens, where, o'er the embers, turns to brown the flesh of rosy sucking-pigs and fat cock-chickens, that whet the edge of appetite afresh. from dawn to eve, from eve to dawn, and after, the masters with their women revel hold- women who play a farce of opulent laughter: farce cynical, obscene, with sleeves uprolled, in corsage ript a flowering gorge not hiding, belly that shakes with jollity, bright eyes. noises of orgy and of rut are gliding, rumbling, and hissing, till they end in cries; a noise of jammed iron and of vessels banging; brauwer and steen tilt baskets on their crowns; brackenburgh is two lids together clanging; others with pokers fiddle gridirons, clowns are all of them, eager to show their mettle; they dance round those who lie with feet in air; they scrape the frying-pan, they scrape the kettle; and the eldest are the steadiest gluttons there, keenest in kisses, and the last to tumble; with greasy nose they lick the casseroles; one of them makes a rusty fiddle grumble, whose bow exhausts itself in cabrioles; some are in corners vomiting, and others are snoring with their arms hung round their seats babies are bawling for their sweating mothers to stuff their little mouths with monster teats. men, women, children, all stuffed full to bursting; appetites ravening, and instincts rife, furies of stomach, and of throats athirsting, debauchery, explosion of rich life, in which these master gluttons, never sated, too genuine for insipidities, pitching their easels lustily, created between two drinking-bouts a masterpiece. the cowherd. in neckerchief and slackened apron goes the girl to graze the cows at dawn's first peep; under the willow shade herself she throws to finish out her sleep. soon as she sinks she snores; around her brow and naked toes the seeded grasses rise; her bulging arms are folded anyhow, and round them buzz the flies. the insects that all heated places love come flitting o'er the grass to bask in swarms upon the mossy patch she lies above, and by her sprawling warms. sometimes her arm, with awkward empty sweep, startles around her limbs the gratified murmur of bees; but, greedy still of sleep, she turns to the other side. the heavy, fleshy flowers the cattle browse frame in the sleeping woman as she dreams; she has the heavy slowness of her cows, her eye with their peace gleams. strength, that the trunk of oaks with knots embosses, shines, as the sap does, in her; and her hair is browner than barley in the fields that tosses, or the sand in the pathways there. her hands are raw, and red, and chapped; the blood that through her tanned limbs rolls its waves of heat, lashes her throat, and lifts her breasts, as would the wind lift bending wheat. noon with a kiss of gold her rest surprises, low willow branches o'er her shoulders lean, and blend, while heavier slumber in her eyes is, with her brown hair their green. the art of the flemings. i. art of the flemings, thou didst know them, thou, who well didst love them, wenches big of bone, with ruddy teats, and bodies like flowers blown; thy proudest masterpieces tell us how. whether a goddess glimmers from thy painting, or nymphs with dripping hair a shepherd sees rising among the lonely irides, or sailors to the sirens' kisses fainting, or females with full contours symbolizing the seasons beautiful, o glorious art, these are the masteries love-born in thy heart, the wenches of thy colours' gormandizing. and to create their bodies' carnal splendour, naked, and fat, and unashamed, thy brush under their clear and glossy skin made blush a fire of unimagined colours tender. they were a focussed light that flashed and glinted; their eyes were kindled at the stars, and on thy canvases their bosoms rose and shone, like great bouquets of flesh all rosy-tinted. sweating with love they rolled about a clearing 'mid in the wood, or bathed their feet in springs, while in the thickets full of noise of wings, satyrs were prowling and through branches leering, and hid their legs, salacious, shagged, distorted; their eyes, like sparks holing the darkness, lit some leafy corner, their long mouths were slit with greasy smiles, their lustful nostrils snorted, till, dogs in rut, they leapt to their bitches; these feign flight, and shiver coldly, blushing roses, pushing the satyr off the part that closes, squeezing their thighs together under his knees. and some, by madness more than his ignited, rounding their naked haunches, and rich flesh of glorious croups beneath a showering mesh of golden hair, to wild assaults invited. ii. you with the life with which yourselves abounded conceived them, masters dear to fame, with red brutalities of blood upon them shed, the bodies of your beauties richly rounded. no pallid women sunk in listless poses morosely on your canvases are seen, as the moon's face shimmers in waters green, mirroring their phthisis and chlorosis, with foreheads sad as is the day's declining, sad as a dolorous music faints and dies, with heavy-lidded, sick and glassy eyes, in which consumption and despair are pining, and false, affected grace of bodies faded upon the sofas where their time they pass, in scented dressing-gowns of taffetas, and in chemises with a dear lace braided. nothing your brushes knew of painted faces, nor of indecency, nor of the nice hints of a cunning and perverted vice which with its winking eye our art debases, nor of the pedlar venuses whose draping of curtains of the cushioned chamber hints, nor corners of a venal flesh that glints in nests out of the low-necked dress escaping, pricking, suggestive themes you knew not, faintings of shepherdesses in false pastorals, no, nor voluptuous beds in hollow walls- the pulsing women, masters, of your paintings, in landscapes bright, or waited on by pages crimsonly clad in panelled halls with gold, or in the purple sumptuousness unrolled of the god-guarded, mellow classic ages, your women sweated health; they were serenely crimson with blood, and white with corpulence; ruts they did hold in leashed obedience, and led them at their heels with gesture queenly. peasants. not greuze's ploughmen made insipid in the melting colours of his pastorals, so neatly dressed, so rosy, that one laughs to see the sugared idyll chastening the pastels of a louis quinze salon, but dirty, gross, and bestial--as they are. penned round some market town in villages, they know not them who traffic in the next, but hold them enemies to cheat and rogue. their fatherland? not one believes in it, except that it makes soldiers of their sons, to steal their labour for a span of years. what is the fatherland to yokels? they see only, in a corner of their brains, vaguely, the king, magnificent man of gold, in the braided velvet of his purple robes, a sceptre, and gemmed crowns escutcheoning the panelled walls of gilded palaces, guarded by sentinels with tasselled swords. this do they know of power. it is enough. and for the rest their heavy feet would march in clogs through duty, liberty, and law. in everything by instinct ankylosed, a dirty almanac is all they read; and though they hear the distant cities roaring, so terrified are they by revolutions, that they are riveted to serfdom's chains, fearing, if they should rear, the iron heel. along the black roads hollowed out with ruts, dung-heaps in front and cinder-heaps behind, stretch with low roofs and naked walls their huts under the buffeting wind and lashing rain. these are their farms. and yonder soars the church, stained, to the north, with ooze of verdigris, and farther, squared with ditches, lie their fields, fertile in patches, thanks to fat manure, and to the harrow's unrelenting teeth. there they keep tilling with their obstinate hands the black glebe mined by moles, and rotten with detritus, pregnant with the autumn's sperm. with dripping brow they drive the spade in deep, doubled above the furrows they must sow, under the hail of march that whips their back. and in the summer, when the ripe rye rocks with golden glints under the pouring sun, here, in the fire of long and torrid days, their restless sickle shaves the vast wheat-field, while from their wrinkled foreheads runs the sweat, opening their skin from shoulders down to hips; noon darts its brazier rays upon their heads; so raw the heat is that in meslin fields the too dry ears burst open, and the beasts, their necks with gadflies riddled, pant in the sun. and let november slow to die arrive, rolling his hectic rattle through deaf woods, howling his sobs and ending not his moans, until his death-knell sounds--still runs their sweat. always anew preparing future crops, under a sky spouting from swollen clouds, while the north wind tears big holes in the woods, and sweeps the broken stubble from the fields, so that their bodies soon in ruin fall: let them be young and comely, broadly built, winter that chills, summer that calcines them, makes their limbs loathsome and their lungs short-breathed; or old, and bearing the down-weighing years, with blear eyes, broken backs, and useless arms, and horror stamped upon their hedgehog face, they stagger under the ruin-loving wind. and when death opens unto them its doors; their coffin sliding into the soft earth seems only to contain a thing twice dead. ii. on evenings when through eddying skies the wind is whirling the swarming snow across the fields, grey-headed farmers sit in reckonings lost, near lamps from which a thread of smoke ascends. the kitchen is unkempt and slatternly: a string of dirty children by the stove gorge the spilt remnants of the evening meal; mangy and bony cats lick dishes clean; cocks make their beaks ring upon pewter plates; damp soaks the leprous walls; and on the hearth four flickering logs are twisting meagre shanks dying with listless tongues of pale red ray; the old men's heads are full of bitter thoughts. "for all the seasons unremitting toil, with all hands at the plough a hundred years, the farm has passed from father on to son, and, with good years and bad, remains the same, jogging along upon the brink of ruin." this is what gnaws and bites them with slow tooth. so like an ulcer hate is in their hearts, patient and cunning hate with smiling face. their frank and loud good nature hatches rage; wickedness glimmers in their icy looks; they stink of the rancorous gall that, age by age, their sufferings have collected in their souls. keen are they on the slightest gain, and mean; since they can not enrich themselves by work, stinginess makes their hearts hard, their hearts fetid; and black their mind is, set on petty things, and stupid and confounded before great; as they had never raised their eyes unto the sun, and seen magnificent sunsets spread on the evening, like a crimson lake. iii. but kermesse is for them a festival, even for the dirtiest, the stingiest, there go the lads to keep the wenches warm. a huge meal, greased with bacon and hot sauces, makes their throats salty and enflames their thirst. they roll in the inns, with rounded guts, and hearts aflame, and break the jaws and necks of those come from the neighbouring town, who try, by god! to lick the village girls too greedily, and gorge a plate of beef that is not theirs. savings are squandered--for the girls must dance, and every chap must treat his mate, until the bottles strew the floor in ugly heaps. the proudest of their strength drain huge beer-mugs, their faces fire-plated, darting fright, horrid with bloodshot eyes and clammy mouth, in the dark rumbling revels kindle suns. the orgy grows. a stinking urine foams in a white froth along the causey chinks. like slaughtered beasts are reeling topers floored. some are with short steps steadying their gait; while others solo bawl a song's refrain, hindered by hiccoughing and vomiting. in brawling groups they ramble through the town, calling the wenches, catching hold of them, hugging them, shoving at them, letting them go, and pulling them back in rut, throwing them down with flying skirts and legs. in the taverns--where the smoke curls like grey fog and climbs to the ceiling, where the gluing sweat of heated, unwashed bodies, and their smells dull window-panes and pewter-pots with steam- to see battalions of couples crowd in growing numbers round the painted tables, it looks as if their crush would smash the walls. more furiously still they go on swilling, stamping and blustering and raging through the cries of the heavy piston and shrill flute. yokels in blue smocks, old hags in white bonnets, and livid urchins smoking pipes picked up, all of them jostle, jump, and grunt like pigs. and sometimes sudden wedges of new-comers crush in a corner the quadrille that looks, so unrestrained it is, like a mixed fight. then try they who can bawl the loudest, who can push the tidal wave back to the wall, though with a knife's thrust he should stab his man. but the band now redoubles its loud din, covers the quarrelling voices of the lads, and mingles all in leaping lunacy. they calm down, joke, touch glasses, drunk as lords. the women in their turn get hot and drunk, lust's carnal acid in their blood corrodes, and in these billowing bodies, surging backs, freed instinct grows to such a heat of rut, that to see lads and lasses wriggling and writhing, with jostling bodies, screams, and blows of fists, crushing embraces, biting kisses, to see them rolling dead drunk into the corners, wallowing upon the floor, knocking themselves against the panels, sweating, and frothing at the lips, their two hands, their ten fingers ransacking and emptying torn corsages, it seems- lust is being lit at the black fire of rape. before the sun burns with red flames, before the white mists fall in swaths, the reeking inns turn the unsteady revellers out of doors. the kermesse in exhaustion ends, the crowd wend their way homewards to their sleeping farms, screaming their oaths of parting as they go. the aged farmers too, with hanging arms, their faces daubed with dregs of wine and beer, stagger with zigzag feet towards their farms islanded in the billowing seas of wheat. fogs. you melancholy fogs of winter roll your pestilential sorrow o'er my soul, and swathe my heart with your long winding-sheet, and drench the livid leaves beneath my feet, while far away upon the heaven's bounds, under the sleeping plain's wet wadding, sounds a tired, lamenting angelus that dies with faint, frail echoes in the empty skies, so lonely, poor, and timid that a rook, hid in a hollow archstone's dripping nook, hearing it sob, awakens and replies, sickening the woeful hush with ghastly cries, then suddenly grows silent, in the dread that in the belfry tower the bell is dead. on the coast. a blustering wind the scattered vapour crowds and shakes the horizon, where the dawn bursts, by a charge that fills the ashen azure sky with rearing, galloping, mad, milky clouds. the whole, clear day, day without mist or rain, with leaping manes, gilt flanks, and fiery croups, in a flight of pallid silver and foam, their troops career across the ether's azure plain. and still their ardour grows, until the eve's black gesture cuts the vast of space, and heaves their masses towards the squall that landward blares, while the ample sun of june, fallen from heaven's vault, writhes, bleeding, in their vehement assault, like a red stallion in a rut of mares. homage. i. to heap in them your heavinesses fair, by double, frugal, savoury breasts embossed, the rosy skin by which your arms are glossed, your belly's curly fleece of reddish hair, my verses i will weave as, at their doors seated, old basket-makers curb and twine white and brown osiers in a clear design, copying enamelled tesselated floors, until your body's gold within them teems; and like a garland i will wear them, spun in massive blonde heaps on my head, in the sun, haughtily proud, as a strong man beseems. ii. your rich flesh minds me of the centauresses, whose arms paul rubens rounded in his dyes of fire beneath a weight of sun-washed tresses, pointing their breasts to lion-cubs' green eyes. your blood was theirs, when in the mazy gloaming, under some star that bit the brazen sky, they heard a stranger in the sea-fog roaming, and hailed some hercules astray and shy; and when with quivering senses hot for kisses, and belly for the unknown gaping, their arms they were twisting, calling to mad blisses huge, swarthy eaters of rut on a body bare. canticles. i. like lissom lizards drinking the sun's fires of gold, with great wide eyes and bronze-nailed feet, crawl towards your body my long, green desires. in the full torrid noon of summer heat i have bedded you in a nook at a field's edge, where the tanned meslin shoots a shivering wedge. heat is suspended o'er us like a daïs; the sky prolongs the vast expanse, gold-plated; afar the scheldt a dwindling, silver way is; lascivious, huge, you lie there yet unsated; like lissom lizards drinking the sun's fires of gold, crawl back to you my spent desires. ii. my love shall be the gorgeous sun that robes with torrid summer and with idlenesses your body's naked slopes and hilly globes, showering its light upon you in caresses, and this new brazier's contact shall be in tongues of an ambient gold that lick your skin. the tragic, rolling red of dawn and eve, and the day's beauty you shall be; with hues of splendour you a billowy robe shall weave; your flesh shall be like fabulous statues, which in the desert sang, and shone like roses, when morning burned their blocks with apotheoses. iii. i would not choose the sunflowers that unclose in daylight; nor the lily long of stem; nor roses loving winds to fondle them; no, nor great nenuphars whose pulp morose, and wide, cold eyes, charged with eternity, upon their imaging pond yawn idle-lipped their stirless dreams; nor flowers despotic, whipped by wrath and wind along a hostile sea, to symbolize you. no, but shivering wet under the dawn, with great red calyx leaves mingling as jets of blood are fused in sheaves, a group of garden dahlias closely set, which, in voluptuous days of autumn, bright with matter's hot maturity and heats, like monstrous and vermilion women's teats, grow stiff beneath the golden hands of light. dying men. sharp with their ills, and lonely in their dying, the sceptic sick watch by their chamber fire, with haggard eyes, the evening magnifying the house-fronts, and the blackening church-spire. the hour is dead where in some never-crowded city by time extinguished, desolate, they live immured in walls by mourning shrouded, and hear the monumental hinges grate. haggard and lone, they gaze at death unbeaten, like grim old wolves, the hieratic sick; life and its days identic they have eaten, their hate, their fate, diseases clustering thick. but shaken in their cynical assurance, and in their haughtiness and pale disgust, they ask: "is happiness not in endurance of wilful suffering, suffering loved with lust?" of old they felt their hearts go out to others; benevolent, they pitied alien griefs; and, like apostles, loved their suffering brothers, and feared their pride, cabined in dead beliefs. but now they think that love is more cemented by cruelty than kindness, which is vain. what of the few, chance tears they have prevented? how many more have flowed? decreed is pain. empty the golden islands are, where lingers in golden mist dream in a mantle spun of purple, skimming foam with idle fingers from silent gold rained by a teeming sun. broken the proud masts, and the waves are churning! steer to extinguished ports the vessel's prow: no lighthouse stretches its immensely burning arm to the great stars--dead the fires are now. haggard and lone, they gaze at death unbeaten, like grim old wolves, the hieratic sick; life and its days identic they have eaten, their hate, their fate, diseases clustering thick. with nails of wood they beat hot foreheads. cages of bones for fevers are their bodies. blind their eyes, their lips like withered parchment pages. a bitter sand beneath their teeth they grind. now in their extinct souls a longing blazes to sail, and in a new world live again, whose sunset like a smoking tripod raises the god of shade and ebony in its brain; in a far land of tempests raging madly, in lands of fury hoarse and livid dreams, where man can drown, ferociously and gladly, his soul and all his heart in fiery streams. they are the tragic sick sharp with diseases; haggard and lone they watch the town fires fade; and pale façades are waiting till it pleases their crumbling bodies have their coffins made. the arms of evening. while the cold night stories its terrace, gored and dying evening throws upon the heath, and forest fringed with marshes underneath, the gold of his armour and the flash of his sword, which wave to wave go floating on, too soon yet to have lost day's flaunting ardent glow, but kissed already by the shadowed, slow lips of the pious, silver-handed moon, the lonely moon remembering the day, whose brandished weapons made a golden glare, a pale wraith in the paleness of the air, the moon for ever pale and far away! the mill. deep in the evening slowly turns the mill against a sky with melancholy pale; it turns and turns, its muddy-coloured sail is infinitely heavy, tired, and ill. its arms, complaining arms, in the dawn's pink rose, rose and fell; and in this o'ercast eve, and deadened nature's silence, still they heave themselves aloft, and weary till they sink. winter's sick day lies on the fields to sleep; the clouds are tired of sombre journeyings; and past the wood that gathered shadow flings the ruts towards a dead horizon creep. around a pale pond huts of beechwood built despondently squat near the rusty reeds; a lamp of brass hung from the ceiling bleeds upon the wall and windows blots of gilt. and in the vast plain, with their ragged eyes of windows patched, the suffering hovels watch the worn-out mill the bleak horizon notch,- the tired mill turning, turning till it dies. in pious mood.[1] the winter lifts its chalice of pure night to heaven. and i uplift my heart, my night-worn heart in turn, o lord, my heart! to thy pale, infinite inane, and yet i know that nought the implenishable urn may plenish, that nought is, whereof this heart dies fain; and i know thee a lie, and with my lips make prayer and with my knees; i know thy great, shut hands averse, thy great eyes closed, to all the clamours of despair; it is i, who dream myself into the universe; have pity on my wandering wits' entire discord; needs must i weep my woe towards thy silence, lord! the winter lifts its chalice of pure night to heaven. --osman edwards. [1] _the savoy_, no. 4, august 1896. the ferryman. with hands on oars the ferryman strove where the stubborn current ran, with a green reed between his teeth. but she who hailed him from the bank, beyond the waves, among the rushes rank that rim the rolling heath, into the mists receded more and more. the windows, with their eyes, and the dials of the towers upon the shore, watched him, with doubled back, straining and toiling at the oar, and heard his muscles crack. of a sudden broke an oar, which the current bore on heavy waves down to the sea. and she who hailed him from the mist, in the blustering wind, appeared more madly still her arms to twist, towards him who never neared. the ferryman took to the oar remaining with such a might, that all his body cracked with straining, and his heart shook with feverish fright. a sudden shock, the rudder tore, and the current bore this remnant to the sea. the windows on the shore, like eyes with fever great, and the dials of the towers, those widows straight that in their thousands throng a river bank, were obstinately staring at this mad fellow obstinately daring his crazy voyage to prolong. and she who hailed him there with chattering teeth, howled and howled in the mists of night, with head stretched out in frantic fright to the unknown, the vast, and rolling heath. the ferryman, as a statue stands, bronze in the storm that paled his blood, with the one oar firm in his hands, beat the waves, and bit the flood. his old hallucinated eyes see the lit distances rejoice, whence reaches him the lamentable voice, under the freezing skies. his last oar breaks, his last oar the current takes, like a straw, down to the sea. the ferryman exhausted sank upon his bench, with sweat that poured, his loins with vain exertion sore, a high wave struck on the lee-board, he looked, behind him lay the bank: he had not left the shore. the windows and the dials gazed, with eyes they opened wide, amazed, where all his strength to ruin ran; but the old, stubborn ferryman kept all the same, for god knows when, the green reed in his teeth, even then. the rain. as reeled from an exhaustless bobbin, the long rain, interminably through the long gray day, lines the green window pane with its long threads of gray, the reeled, exhaustless rain, the long rain, the rain. it has been ravelling out, since last sunset, rags hanging soft and low from sulky skies of jet. unravelling, patient, slow, upon the roads, since last sunset, on roads and streets, continual sheets. along the leagues that wind through quiet suburbs to the fields behind, along the roads interminably bending, in funeral procession, drenched, resigned, toiling, bathed in sweat and steam, vehicles with tilted coverings are wending; in ruts so regular, and parallel so far by night to join the firmament they seem, the water drips hour after hour, the spouts gush, and the trees shower, with long rain wet, with rain tenacious yet. rivers o'er rotten dikes are brimming upon the meadows where drowned hay is swimming; the wind is whipping walnut trees and alders, and big black oxen wading stand deep in the water of the polders, and bellow at the writhen sky; and evening is at hand, bringing its shadows to enfold the plain, and lie clustered at the washed tree's root; and ever falls the rain, the long rain, as fine and dense as soot. the long rain, the long rain falls afresh; and its identic thread weaves mesh by mesh a raiment making naked shred by shred the cottages and farmyards gray of hamlets crumbling fast away; a bunch of linen rags that hang down sick upon a loosely planted stick; here a blue dovecote to the roof that cleaves; sinister window panes plastered with paper rank with mildew stains; dwellings whose regular eves form crosses on their gable ends of stone; uniform, melancholy mills, standing like horns upon their hills; chapels, and spires with ivy overgrown; the rain the long rain winter-long beneath them burrows. the rain, in lines, the long, gray rain untwines its watery tresses o'er its furrows, the long rain of countries old, torpid, eternally unrolled. the fishermen. up from the sea a flaky, dank, thickening fog rolls up, and chokes windows and closed doors, and smokes upon the slippery river bank. drowned gleams of gas-lamps shake and fall where rolls the river's carrion; the moon looks like a corpse, and on the heaven's rim its burial. but flickering lanterns now and then light up and magnify the backs, bent obstinately in their smacks, of the old river fishermen, who all the time, from last sunset, for what night's fishing none can know, have cast their black and greedy net, where silent, evil waters flow. deep down beyond the reach of eye fates of evil gathering throng, which lure the fishers where they lie to fish for them with patience strong, true to their task of simple toiling in contradictory fogs embroiling. and o'er them peal the minutes stark, with heavy hammers peal their knells, the minutes sound from belfry bells, the minutes hard of autumn dark, the minutes list. and the black fishers in their ships, in their cold ships, are clad in shreds; down their cold nape their old hat drips and drop by drop in water sheds all the mist. their villages are numb and freeze; their huts are all in ruin sunk, and the willows and the walnut-trees the winds of the west have whipped and shrunk; and not a bark comes through the dark, and never a cry through the void midnight, that floated, humid ashes blight. and never helping one another, never brother hailing brother, never doing what they ought, for himself each fisher's thought: and the first draws his net, and seizes all the fry of his poverty; and the next drags up, as keen as he, the empty bottoms of diseases; another opens out his net to griefs that on the surface swim; and another to his vessel's rim pulls up the flotsam of regret. the river churns, league after league, along the dikes, and runs away, as it has done so many a day, to the far horizon of fatigue; upon its banks skins of black clay by night perspire a poison draught; the fogs are fleeces far to waft, and to men's houses journey they. never a lantern streaks the dark, and nothing stirs in the fisher's bark, save, nimbusing with halos of blood, the thick white felt of the clustering fogs, silent death, who with madness clogs the brains of the fishermen on the flood. lonely at the fog's cold heart, each sees not each, though side by side; their arms are tired, their vessels ride by sandbanks marked on ruin's chart. why in the dark do they not hail each other? why does a brother's voice console not brother? no, numb and haggard they remain, with vaulted back and heavy brain, with, by their side, their little light rigid in the river's night. like blocks of shadow there they arc, and never pierce their eyes afar beyond the acrid, spongy wet; and they suspect not that above, luring them with a magnet's love, stars immense are shining yet. these fishers in black torment tossed, they are the men immensely lost among the knells and far aways and far beyonds where none can gaze; and in their souls' monotonous deeps the humid autumn midnight weeps. silence. since last the summer broke above her a flash of lightning from his thunder-sheath, silence has never left her cover in the heather on the heath. across her refuge peers the steeple, and with its fingers shakes its bells; around her prowl the vehicles, laden with uproarious people; around her, where the fir-trees end, in its rut the cart-wheel grates; but never a noise has strength to rend the tense, dead space where silence waits. since the last loud thunder weather, silence has stirred not in the heather; and the heath, wherein the evenings sink, beyond the endless thickets, and the purple mounds of hidden sand, lengthens her haunts to heaven's brink. and even winds stir not the slim larches at the marsh's rim, where she will glass her abstract eyes in pools where wondering lilies rise; and only brushes her the clouds' shadow when they rush in crowds, or else the shadow of a flight of hovering hawks at heavens' height. since the last flash of lightning streaked the plain, nothing has bitten, in her vast domain. and those who in her realm did roam, whether it were in dawn or gloam, they all have felt their hearts held fast in spells of mystery she has cast. she, like an ample, final force, keeps on the same unbroken course; black walls of pinewoods gloom and bar the paths of hope that gleam afar; clusters of dreamy junipers frighten the feet of wanderers; malignant mazes intertwine with paths of cunning curve and line, and the sun every moment shifts the goal to which confusion drifts. since the lightning that the storm forged bit, the bitter silence at the corners four of the heath, has changed no whit. the shepherds with their hundred years worn out, and the spent dogs that follow them about, see her, on golden dunes where shadows flit, or in the noiseless moorland, sometimes sit, immense, beneath the outspread wing of night; then waters on the wrinkled pond take fright; and the heather veils itself and palely glistens, and every leaf in every thicket listens, and the incendiary sunset stills the last cry of his light that o'er her thrills. and the hamlets neighbouring her, beneath their thatch of hovels on the heath, shiver with terror, feeling her dominant, though she do not stir; mournful, and tired, and helpless they stand in her presence as at bay, and watch benumbed, and nigh to swoon, fearing, when mists shall lift, to see, suddenly opening under the moon, the silver eyes of her mystery. the rope-maker. at the dike's foot that wearily curves along the sinuous sea, the visionary, silver-haired rope-maker with arms bared, pulling backwards as he stands, rolls together, with prudent hands, the twisting play of endless twine, coming from the far sky-line. down yonder in the sunset sheen, in the twilight tired and chill, a busy wheel is whizzing still, moved by one who is not seen; but, parallel on stakes that space the road from equal place to place, the yellow hemp that the roper draws runs in a chain that never flaws. with skilful fingers thin and old, fearing to break the glint of gold that with his work the gliding light blends by the houses growing dim, the visionary roper weaves out of the heart of the eddying eves, and draws the horizons unto him. horizons? those of red sunsets: furies, hatred, fights, regrets, sobs of beings broken-hearted, horizons of the days departed, writhen, golden, overcast; horizons of the living past. of old--the life of strayed somnambulists, when the right hand of god to canaans blue the road of gold through gloaming deserts drew, through morns and evenings swayed with shifting mists. of old--exasperated life careering hanging from stallions' manes, lighting the dense darkness with heels that flashed out gleams immense, towards immensity immensely rearing. of old--it was a life of burning leaven; when the red cross of hell and heaven's white through miles of marshalled mail that shed the light marched each through blood towards its victory's heaven. of old--it was a foaming, livid life, living and dead, with tocsin bells and crime, edicts and massacres reddening the time, with mad and splendid death above the strife. between the flax and osiers, on the road where nothing stirs, along the houses growing dim, the visionary roper weaves out of the heart of the eddying eves, and draws the horizon unto him. horizons? there they linger yet: toil, and science, struggle, fret. horizons? there at even-chime, they in their mirrors show the mourning image of the present time. now, a mass of fires that belch defiance, where wise men, leagued in mighty storm and stress, hurl the gods down to change the nothingness whereunto strives the force of human science. now, lo! a room that ruthless thought has swept, weighed and exactly measured, and men swear the firmament is arched by empty air; and death is in glass bottles corked and kept. now, lo! a glowing furnace, and resistance of matter molten in fire's dragon dens; new strengths are forged, far mightier than men's, to swallow up the night, and time, and distance. here, lo! a palace tiredly built, and lying beneath a century's weight, bowed down and yellow, and whence, in terror, mighty voices bellow, invoking thunder towards adventure flying. upon the regular road, with eyes fixed where the silent sunset dies, and leaves the houses drear and dim, the visionary roper weaves out of the heart of the eddying eves, and draws the horizons unto him. horizons? where yon sunset beams: combats, hopes, awakenings, gleams; the horizons he can see defined in the future of his mind, far beyond the shores that swim sketched in the sky of sunsets dim. up yonder--in the calm skies hangs a red staircase of double gold with steps of blue, with dream and science mounting it, the two who separately climb to one stair-head. the lightning clash of contraries expires; doubt's mournful fist its fingers opes, while wed essential laws that had been wont to shed in horal doctrines their fragmentary fires. up yonder--mind more strong and subtle darts its violence past death and what is seen. and universal love sheds a serene and mighty silence over tranquil hearts. the god in every human heart, above, unfolds, expands, and his own being sees in those who sometimes fell upon their knees to worship sacred grief and humble love. up yonder--living peace is burning bright, and shedding on these lands, down evening's slope a bliss that kindles, like the brands of hope, in the air's ash the great stars of the night. at the dike's foot that wearily curves along the sinuous sea towards the distant eddying spaces, the visionary roper paces along the houses growing dim, and drinks the horizons into him. saint george. by a broad flash the fog was split, and saint george, with gold and jewels lit, came down the slope of it, with feathers foaming from his crest, riding a charger with a milky breast, and in its mouth no bit. with diamonds decked the two made of their fall a path of pity to this earth of ours from heaven's blue. heroes with helpful virtues dowered, sonorous with courage, heroes crystalline, o through my heart now let the radiance shine that from his aureolar sword is showered! o let me hear the silver prattle of the wind around his coat of mail, and around his spurs in battle; saint george, who shall prevail, he who has heard the cries of my distress, and comes to save from scaith my poor arms stretched unto his great prowess! like a loud cry of faith, he holds his lance at rest, saint george; he passes, i behold a victory as of a haggard gold, i see his forehead with the chrism blessed: saint george of duty, bright with his heart's and his own beauty. sound, all ye voices of my hope! sound in myself, and on the sun-swept slope, and high roads, and the shaded avenue! and, gleams of silver between stones, be you joy, and you pebbles white with waters ope your eyes, and look up through the brook whose ripples o'er you roll, and, landscape with thy crimson lakes, be thou the mirror of the flights of flame that now saint george takes to my soul! against the black dragon's teeth, against the pustules of a leprous skin he is the glaive and the miraculous sheath. charity on his cuirass burns, and in his courage is the bounding overthrow of instinct swart with sin. fire golden-sifted, fire that wheels, and eddying stars in which his glory lies, flashed from his charger's galloping heels, dazzle my memory's eyes. the beautiful ambassador is he from the white country that with marble glows, where in the parks, on the sea's strand, and on the tree of goodness, kindness gently grows. the port, he knows it, where the vessels ride, with angels filled, upon a rippling tide; and the long evenings lighting islands fair but motionless upon their waters, where, and in eyes also, firmaments are seen. this kingdom hath the virgin for its queen, and st. george is the humble joy of her palace, in the air his falchion glimmers like a chalice; saint george with his devouring light, who like a fire of gold dispels my spirit's night. he knows how far my feet have wandered, he knows the strength that i have squandered, and with what fogs my brain has fought, he knows what keen assassin knives have cut black crosses in my thought, he knows my scorn of rich men's lives, he knows the mask of wrath and folly upon the dregs of my melancholy. i was a coward in my flight out of the world in my sick, vain defiance; i have lifted, under the roofs of night, the golden marbles of a hostile science to the barred summits of black oracles; but the king of the night is death; and man but in the dawning's breath his enigmatic effort spells; when flowers unclose, prayer too uncloses, with the scent of prayer their lips are sweet, and the white sun on a nacreous water-sheet is a kiss that on man's lips reposes; dawn is a counsel to be bold, and he who hearkens is tenfold saved from the marsh that never yet cleansed sin. saint george in cuirass glittering with leaps of fire sprung unto my soul through the fresh morning; he was beautiful with faith and young; and more to me he bent as he beheld me penitent; as from an intimate golden phial he filled me with his soaring; though he was proud unto my sight, i laid the sweet flowers of my trial in his pale hand of blest restoring; then signed he, ere he did depart, my brow with his lance's cross of gold, bade me be of good cheer and bold, and soared, and bore to god my heart. in the north. two ancient mariners from the northern main one autumn eve came sailing home again, from sicily and its deceitful islands, carrying a shoal of sirens on board. sharpened with pride they sail into their bay; among the mists that mark the homeward way they cut their passage like a sword; under a mournful and monotonous gale, one autumn evening of a sadness pale, into their northern fjord they sail. from the safe shore the burghers of the haven gaze listless, cold, and craven: and on the masts, and in the ropes, behold the sirens covered with gold biting, like vines, their bodies' sinuous lines. the burghers gaze with closed and sullen mouth, nor see the ocean booty of the south, brought in the fog's despite; the vessel seems a basket silver-white, laden with flesh and fruit and gold for home, advancing borne on wings of foam. the sirens sing, and in the cordage they with arms stretched out in lyres, and lifted breasts like fires, sing and sing a lay before the rolling eve, which reaps upon the sea the lights of day; the sirens sing, and cleave around the masts as curves the handle of the urn and still the citizens, uncouth and taciturn, hear not the song. they do not know their friends away so long- the ancient mariners twain--nor understand the vessel is of their own land, neither the foc-jibs of their own making, nor the sails themselves have sewn; of this deep dream they fathom naught, which makes the sea glad with its journeyings, since it was not the lie of all the things that in their village to their youth were taught. and the ship passes by the harbour mole, luring them to the wonder of its soul, but none will gather them the fruits of flesh and gold that load the trellised shoots. the town. every road goes to the town. under the mist that the sun illumes, she, where her terraces arise and taper to the terraced skies, herself as from a dream exhumes. yonder glimmer looking down, bridges trimmed with iron lace, leaps in air and caught in space; blocks and columns like the head of a gorgon gashed and red; o'er the suburbs chimneys tower; gables open like a flower, under stagnant roofs that frown. this is the many-tentacled town, this is the flaming octopus, the ossuary of all of us. at the country's end she waits, feeling towards the old estates. meteoric gas-lamps line docks where tufted masts entwine; still they burn in noontides cold, monster eggs of viscous gold; never seems the sun to shine: mouth as it is of radiance, shut by reeking smoke and driving smut. a river of pitch and naphtha rolls by wooden bridges, mortared moles; and the raw whistles of the ships howl with fright in the fog that grips: with a red signal light they peer towards the sea to which they steer. quays with clashing buffers groan; carts grate o'er the cobble-stone; cranes are cubes of shadow raising, and slipping them in cellars blazing; bridges opening lift a vast gibbet till the ships have passed; letters of brass inscribe the world, on roofs, and walls, and shop-fronts curled, face to face in battle massed. wheels file and file, the drosky plies, trains are rolling, effort flies; and like a prow becalmed, the glare of gilded stations here and there; and, from their platforms, ramified rails beneath the city glide, in tunnels and in craters, whence they storm in network flashing thin out into hubbub, dust, and din. this is the many-tentacled town. the street, with eddies tied like ropes around its squares, runs out and gropes along the city up and down, and runs back far enlaced, and lined with crowds inextricably twined, whose mad feet beat the flags beneath, whose eyes are filled with hate, whose teeth snatch at the time they cannot catch. dawn, eve, and night, lost in the press, they welter in their weariness, and cast to chance the bitter seed of labour that no gain can breed. and dens black with inanity where poisoned sits the clerk and fasts; and banks wide open to the blasts of the winds of their insanity. outside, in wadding of the damp, red lights in streaks, like burning rags, straggle from reeking lamp to lamp. and alcohol goads life that lags. the bar upon the causey masses its tabernacle of looking-glasses, reflecting drunken louts and hags. to and fro a young girl passes, and sells lights to the lolling men; debauch buys famine in her den; and carnal lust ignited sallies to dance to death in rotten alleys. lust roars and leaps from breast to breast, whipped to a rage uproarious, to a blind crush of limbs in quest of the pleasure of gold and phosphorus; and in and out wan women fare, with sexual symbols in their hair. the atmosphere of reeking dun at times recedes towards the sun, as though a loud cry called to peace to bid the deafening noises cease; but all the city puffs and blows with such a violent snort and flush, that the dying seek in vain the hush of silence that eyes need to close. such is the day--and when the eves with ebony hammers carve the skies, over the plain the city heaves its shimmer of colossal lies; her haunting, gilt desires arise; her radiance to the stars is cast; she gathers her gas in golden sheaves; her rails are highways flying fast to the mirage of happiness that strength and fortune seem to bless; like a great army swell her walls; and all the smoke she still sends down reaches the fields in radiant calls. this is the many-tentacled town, this is the burning octopus, the ossuary of all of us, the carcase with solemn candles lit. and all the long ubiquitous roads and pathways reach to it. the music-hall. under the enormous fog whose wings the city arteries clog, 'mid ringing plaudits, at the back of a radiant hall their orients they unpack. the acrobat on airy trestles poises; great suns of strass shine o'er the scene; clashing their fists stand cymbal-players, lean breakers of cries and noises; and when the ballet-corps with painted faces in a thicket of perplexing steps appear, tangling and disentangling labyrinthine paces, the hall, hung with its gorgeous chandelier, that o'er a surging sea of faces glares, the hall with heavy velvet clad, with balconies like pad on pad, is like a belly that a woman bares. swarming battalions of flesh and thighs march under arches flowered with thousand dyes; lace, petticoats, throats, legs, and hips: teams of rut whose breasts, though bridled, yet are bounding, yoke by yoke the coiled dance trips, blue with paint and raw with sweat. hands, vainly opening, seem to seize only invisible desire that flees; a dancer, darting legs her tights leave bare, stiffens obscenity in the air; another with swimming eyes and flanks that writhe shrinks like a trampled beast above the loud flare of the footlights swaying with the lithe lust of the gloating crowd. o blasphemy vociferously hurled in crying gold on the beauty of the world! atrocious feint of art, while art sublime is lying massacred and sunk in slime! o noisy pleasure singing as it treads on tortured ugliness that twists and cries; pleasure against joy's grain that nurtures heads with alcohol, with alcohol men's eyes; o pleasure whose rank mouth calls out for flowers, and vomits the vile ferment it devours! pleasure of old, heroic, calm, and bare, walked with calm hands and forehead clear as air; the wind and the sun danced in his heart, he pressed divine, harmonious life, to his warm breast; his breast that breathed it in was beauty's source; he knew no law that dared call beauty coarse; sunrise and sunset, springs with mosses grassed, and the green bough that brushed him as he passed, thrilled to his deep soul through his flesh, and were the kiss of things that love makes lovelier. now senile and debauched, he licks and eats sin that beguiles him with her poisoned teats; now in his garden of anomalies bibles, codes, texts, and rules he multiplies, and ravishes the faith he then denies. his loves are gold. his hatreds? flights unto beauty that grows still lovelier, still more true, opening in starry flowers in heavens blue. look where he haunts these halls of monstrous art, whose burning windows to the heavens dart a restlessness by gazing still renewed: here is the beast transformed to a multitude. filled with contagion thousand eyes deflect to find a million more they may infect; one mind to thousands casts its brazier fire, to be consumed the more in sick desire, to breed new vices, unimagined hell. the conscience changes, and the brain as well; another race is bred from putrid spawn, a writhen black totality, a sum of ciphers spreading in a weltering scum, that outrages the healthfulness of dawn. o shames and crimes of crowds that reek and stain the city like a bellowing hurricane; gulfed in the plaster boxes tier on tier of theatres and halls obscene and blear! the stage is like a fan unfurled. enamelled minarets grotesquely curled. houses and terraces and avenues. under the limelight's changing hues, first in slow rhythms, then with violent sweep, gathering swift kisses, touching breasts that leap, meet the bayadères with swaying hips; negro boys, whose heads with plumes are tipped, with their foam-coloured teeth in lips like a red vulva open ripped, move all as pushed along in sluggish poses. a drum beats, an obstinate horn cries long, a raw fife tickles a stupid song, and at the last, for the final apotheosis, a mad assault over the boards is sweeping, gold and throats and thighs in stages heaping in curled entanglements; and then all closes with garments splitting offering rounded shapes and vice half hid in flowers like tempting grapes. and the orchestra dies, or suddenly halts, and climbs, and swells, and rolls in whipped assaults; out of the violins wriggle spasms dark; lascivious dogs in the tempest seem to bark of heavy brasses and of strong bassoons; a manifold desire swells, sickens, swoons, revives, and with such heavy violence heaves, the sense cries out, and helpless reels, and prostitutes itself to a spasm that relieves. and midnight peals. the dense crowd pours and at the doors unfurls. the hall is closed--and on the black causeways, gaudy beneath the gaslamps' leering gaze, red in the fog like flesh, await the girls. the butcher's stall. hard by the docks, soon as the shadows fold the dizzy mansion-fronts that soar aloft, when eyes of lamps are burning soft, the shy, dark quarter lights again its old allurement of red vice and gold. women, blocks of heaped, blown meat, stand on low thresholds down the narrow street, calling to every man that passes; behind them, at the end of corridors, shine fires, a curtain stirs and gives a glimpse of masses of mad and naked flesh in looking-glasses. hard by the docks. the street upon the left is ended by a tangle of high masts and shrouds that blocks a sheet of sky; upon the right a net of grovelling alleys falls from the town--and here the black crowd rallies to reel to rotten revelry. it is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury, time out of mind erected on the frontiers of the city and the sea. far-sailing melancholy mariners who, wet with spray, through grey mists peer, cradled among the rigging cabin-boys, and they who steer hallucinated by the blue eyes of the vast sea-spaces, all dream of it, evoke it when the evening falls; their raw desire to madness galls; the wind's soft kisses hover on their faces; the wave awakens rolling images of soft embraces; and their two arms implore, stretched in a frantic cry towards the shore. and they of offices and shops, the city tribes, merchants precise, keen reckoners, haggard scribes, who sell their brains for hire, and tame their brows, when the keys of desks are hanging on the wall, feel the same galling rut at even-fall, and run like hunted dogs to the carouse. out of the depths of dusk come their dark flocks, and in their hearts debauch so rudely shocks their ingrained greed and old accustomed care, that they are racked and ruined by despair. it is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury, time out of mind erected on the frontiers of the city and the sea. come from what far sea-isles or pestilent parts? come from what feverish or methodic marts? their eyes are filled with bitter, cunning hate, they fight their instincts that they cannot sate; around red females who befool them, they herd frenzied till the dawn of sober day. the panelling is fiery with lewd art; out of the wall nitescent knick-knacks dart; fat bacchuses and leaping satyrs in wan mirrors freeze an unremitting grin; flowers sicken on the gaming-tables where the warming bowls twist fire of light blue hair; a pot of paint curds on an étagère; a cat is catching flies on cushioned seats; a drunkard lolls asleep on yielding plush, and women come, and o'er him bending, brush his closed, red lids with their enormous teats. and women with spent loins and sleeping croups are piled on sofas and arm-chairs in groups, with sodden flesh grown vague, and black and blue with the first trampling of the evening's crew. one of them slides a gold coin in her stocking; another yawns, and some their knees are rocking; others by bacchanalia worn out, feeling old age, and, sniffing them, death's snout, stare with wide-open eyes, torches extinct, and smooth their legs with hands together linked. it is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury, time out of mind erected on the frontiers of the city and the sea. according to the jingle of the purses the women mingle promises with curses; a tranquil cynicism, a tired pleasure is meted duly to the money's measure. the kiss grows weary, and the game grows tame. often when fist with fist together clashes, in the wind of oaths and insults still the same, some gaiety out of the blasphemy flashes, but soon sinks, and you hear, in the silence dank and drear, a halting steeple near sounding, sick with pity, in the darkness over the city. yet in those months by festivals sanctified, st. peter in summer, in winter christmastide, the ancient quarter of dirt and light soars up to sin and pounces on its joys, fermenting with wild songs and boisterous noise window by window, flight by flight, with vice the house-fronts glow down from the garret to the grids below. everywhere rage roars, and couples heats. in the great hall to which the sailors throng, pushing some jester of the streets, convulsed in obscene mimicry, along, the wines of foam and gold leap from their sheath; women fall underneath mad, brawling drunkards; loosened ruts flame, arms unite, and body body butts; nothing is seen but instincts slaked and lit afresh, breasts offered, bellies taken, and the fire of haggard eyes in sheaves of brandished flesh. the frenzy climbs, and sinks to rise still higher, rolls like exasperated tides, and backwards glides, until the moment when dawn fills the port, and death, tired of the sport, back to ships and homesteads sweeps and harries the limp debauch and human weed that on the pavement tarries. it is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury, wherein crime plants his knives that bleed, where lightning madness stains foreheads with rotting pains, time out of mind erected on the frontiers that feed the city and the sea. a corner of the quay. when the wind sulks, and the dune dries, the old salts with uneasy eyes hour after hour peer at the skies. all are silent; their hands turning, a brown juice from their lips they wipe; never a sound save, in their pipe, the dry tobacco burning. that storm the almanac announces, where is it? they are puzzled. the sea has smoothed her flounces. winter is muzzled. the cute ones shake their pate, and cross their arms, and puff. but mate by mate they wait, and think the squall is late, but coming sure enough. with fingers slow, sedate their finished pipe they fill; pursuing, every salt, without a minute's halt, the same idea still. a boat sails up the bay, as tranquil as the day; its keel a long net trails, covered with glittering scales. out come the men: what ho? when will the tempest come? with pipe in mouth, still dumb, with bare foot on _sabot,_ the salts wait in a row. here they lounge about, where all year long the stout fishers' dames sell, from their wooden frames, herrings and anchovies, and by each stall a stove is, to warm them with its flames. here they spit together, spying out the weather. here they yawn and doze; backs bent with many a squall, rubbing it in rows, grease the wall. and though the almanac is wrong about the squall, the old salts lean their back against the wall, and wait in rows together, watching the sea and the weather. my heart is as it climbed a steep. my heart is as it climbed a steep, to reach your kindness fathomlessly deep, and there i pray to you with swimming eyes. i came so late to where you arc, you with your pity more than prodigal's surmise; i came from very far unto the two hands you were holding out, calmly, to me who stumbled on in doubt! i had in me so much tenacious rust, that gnawed with its rapacious teeth my confidence in myself; i was so tired, i was so spent, i was so old with my mistrust, i was so tired, i was so spent with all the roads of my discontent. so little i deserved the joy how deep of seeing your feet light up my wilderness, that i am trembling still with it, and nigh to weep, and lowly for ever is the heart you bless. when i was as a man that hopeless pines. when i was as a man that hopeless pines, and pitfalls all my hours were, you were the light that welcomed home the wanderer, the light that from the frosted window shines on snow at dead of night. your spirit's hospitable light touched my heart, and hurt it not, like a cool hand on one with fever hot! a element word of green, reviving hope ran down the piled wrack of my heart's waste slope; then came stout confidence and right good will, frankness, and tenderness, and at the last, with hand in hand held fast, an evening of clear understanding and of storms grown still. since, though the summer followed winter's chill, both in ourselves and under skies whose deathless fires with gold all pathways of our thoughts adorn, though love has grown immense, a great flower born of proud desires, a flower that, without cease, to grow still more, in our hearts begins as e'er before, i still look at the little light which first shone out on me in my soul's night. lest anything escape from our embrace. lest anything escape from our embrace, which is as sacred as a temple's holy place, and so that the bright love pierce with light the body's mesh, together we descend into the garden of your flesh. your breasts are there like offerings made, you hold your hands out, mine to greet, and nothing can be worth the simple meat of whisperings in the shade. the shadow of white boughs caresses your throat and face, and to the ground the blossoms of your tresses fall unbound. all of blue silver is the sky, the night is a silent bed of ease, the gentle night of the moon, whose breeze kisses the lilies tall and shy. i bring to you as offering to-night. i bring to you as offering to-night my body boisterous with the wind's delight; in floods of sunlight i have bathed my skin; my feet are clean as the grass they waded in; soft are my fingers as the flowers they held; my eyes are brightened by the tears that welled within them, when they looked upon the earth strong without end and rich with festive mirth; space in its living arms has snatched me up, and whirled me drunk as from the mad wine-cup; and i have walked i know not where, with pent cries that would free my heart's wild wonderment; i bring to you the life of meadow-lands; sweet marjoram and thyme have kissed my hands; breathe them upon my body, all the fresh air and its light and scents are in my flesh. in the cottage where our peaceful love reposes. in the cottage where our peaceful love reposes, with its dear old furniture in shady nooks, where never a prying witness on us looks, save through the casement panes the climbing roses, so sweet the days are, after olden trial, so sweet with silence is the summer time, i often stay the hour upon the chime in the clock of oak-wood with the golden dial. and then the day, the night is so much ours, that the hush of happiness around us starts to hear the beating of our clinging hearts, when on your face my kisses fall in showers. this is the good hour when the lamp is lit. this is the good hour when the lamp is lit. all is calm, and consoling, and dear, and the silence is such that you could hear a feather falling in it. this is the good hour when to my chair my love will flit, as breezes blow, as smoke will rise, gentle, slow. she says nothing at first--and i am listening; i hear all her soul, i surprise its gushing and glistening, and i kiss her eyes. this is the good hour when the lamp is lit. when hearts will say how they have loved each other through the day. and one says such simple things: the fruit one from the garden brings; the flower that one has seen opening in mosses green; and the heart will of a sudden thrill and glow, remembering some faded word of love found in a drawer beneath a cast-off glove in a letter of a year ago. the sovran rhythm. yet, after years and years, to eve there came impatience in her soul, and as a blight of being the sapless, loveless flower of white and torrid happiness that cleaved the same; and once, when in the skies the tempest moved fain had she risen and its lightning proved. then did a sweet, broad shudder glide on her; and, in her deepest flesh to feel it, eve pressed her frail hands against her bosom's heave. the angel, when he felt the sleeper stir with violent abrupt awakening, and scattered air and arms, and body rocked, questioned the night, but eve remained unlocked, and silent. he in vain bespoke each thing that lived beside her by the naked sources, birds, flowers, and mirrors of cold water-courses with which, perchance, her unknown thought arose up from the ground; and one night when he bowed, and with his reverent fingers sought to close her eyes, she leapt out of his great wing's shroud. o fertile folly in its sudden flare beyond the too pure angel's baffled care! for while he stretched his arms out she was drifting already far, and passionately lifting to braziers of the stars her body bare. and all the heart of adam, seeing her so, trembled. she willed to love, he willed to know. awkward and shy he neared her, daring not to startle eyes that lost in reveries swam; from terebinths were fluttered scents, and from the soil's fermenting mounted odours hot. he tarried, as if waiting for her hests; but she snatched up his hands, and o'er them hung, and kissed them slowly, long, with kiss that clung, and guided them to cool erected breasts. but through her flesh they burned and burned. his mouth had found the fires to set on flame his drouth, and his lithe fingers spread her streaming tresses o'er the long ardour of their first caresses. stretched by the cool of fountains both were lying, seen of their passion-gleaming eyes alone. and adam felt a sudden thought unknown well in his heart to her fast heart replying. eve's body hid profound retreats as sweet as moss that by the noon's cool breeze is brushed; gladly came sheaves undone to be their seat, gladly the grass was by their loving crushed. and when the spasm leapt from them at last, and held them bruised in arms strained stiff and tight, all the great amorous and feline night tempered its breeze as over them it passed. but on their vision burst a cloud far off at first, and whirling its dizziness with such a blast that it was all a miracle and a fright, leapt from the dim horizon through the night. adam raised eve, and pressed unto him fast her shivering body exquisitely wan. livid and sulphurous the cloud came on, with thundering threats o'erflowing, and red lit. suddenly on the spot where the wild grass was hot with their two bodies that had loved on it, all the loud rage of the dark, tremendous cloud bit. and the voice of the lord god in its shadow sounded, fires from the flowers and nightly bushes bounded; and where the dark the turning paths submerged, with sword in hand flamboyant angels surged; lions were roaring at the fateful skies, eagles hailed death with hoarsely boding cries; and by the waters all the palm-trees bent under the same hard wind of discontent that beat on eve and adam on that sward, and in the vasty darkness drove them toward new human worlds more fervent than the old. * * * * * now felt the man a magnet manifold draw out his strength and mingle it with all; ends he divined, and knew what gave them birth; his lover's lips with words grew magical; and his unwritten simple heart loved earth, and serviceable water, trees that hold authority, and stones that broken shine. fruits tempted him to take their placid gold, and the bruised grapes of the translucent vine kindled his thirst which they were ripe to still. the howling beasts he chased awoke the skill that in his hands had slept; and pride dowered him with vehement strengths that foam and over-brim, that he himself his destiny might build. and the woman, still more fair since by the man the marvellous shiver through her body ran, lived in the woods of gold by perfumes filled and dawn, with all the future in her tears. in her awoke the first soul, made of pride and sweet strength blended with an unknown shame, at the hour when all her heart was shed in flame on the child sheltered in her naked side. and when the day burns glorious and is done, and feet of tall trees in the forests gleam, she laid her body full of her young dream on sloping rocks gilt by the setting sun; her lifted breasts two rounded shadows showed upon her skin as rosy as a shell, and the sun that on her pregnant body glowed seemed to be ripening all the world as well. valiant and grave she pondered, burning, slow, how by her love the lot of men should grow, and of the beautiful and violent will fated to tame the earth. ye sacred cares and griefs, she saw you, you she saw, despairs! and all the darkest deeps of human ill. and with transfigured face and statelier bearing she took your hands in hers and kissed your brow; but you as well, men's grandeur madly daring, you lifted up her soul, and she saw how the limitless sands of time should by your tide be buried under billows singing pride; in you she hoped, ideas keen in quest, fervour to love and to desire the best in valiant pain and anguished joy; and so, one evening roving in the after-glow, when she beheld, come to a mossy plot, the gates of paradise thrown open wide, and the angel beckoning, she turned aside without desire of it, and entered not. bibliography. the translations in this anthology have been taken from the following collections of poems:-bonmariage (sylvain), poèmes, société française d'editions modernes, paris, 1909. braun (thomas), le livre des bénédictions, brussels, 1900. collin (isi-), la vallée heureuse, liège and paris, 1903. dominique (jean), l'anémone des mers, mercure de france, 1906. elskamp (max), la louange de la vie, mercure de france, 1898. ----enluminures, lacomblez, brussels, 1898. fontainas (andré), crépuscules, mercure de france, 1897. ----la nef désemparée, mercure de france, 1908. gérardy (paul), roseaux, mercure de france, 1898. gilkin (iwan), la nuit (reprint of _la damnation de l'artiste_, 1890, and _ténèbres_,1892), fischbacher, paris, 1897. (new edition mercure de france, 1910.) gille (valère), la cithare, fischbacher, paris, 1897. giraud (albert), hors du siècle, vanier, paris, 1888. ----la guirlande des dieux, lamertin, brussels, 1910. kinon (victor), l'âme des saisons, larcier, brussels, 1909. lerberghe (charles van), entrevisions, mercure de france, 1898 ----la chanson d'eve, mercure de france, 1904. le roy (grégoire), la chanson du pauvre, mercure de france, 1907. ----la couronne des soirs, lamertin, brussels, 1911. maeterlinck (maurice), serres chaudes suivies de quinze chansons, lacomblez, brussels, 1906. marlow (georges), l'âme en exil, deman, brussels, 1895. mockel (albert), chantefable un peu naïve, liège, 1891. ----clartés, mercure de france, 1902. ----_vers et prose_, 1910. ----la flamme immortelle (in preparation). ramaekers (georges), le chant des trois règnes, brussels, 1906. rency (georges), vie, lacomblez, brussels, 1897. ----les heures harmonieuses, brussels, 1897. séverin (fernand), poèmes, mercure de france, 1907. ----_le centaure_, published in _la vie intellectuelle_, nov. 19th, 1909. verhaeren (émile), poèmes, mercure de france, 1900 (reprint of _les flamandes_, 1883; _les moines_, 1886; _les bords de la route_, 1891). ----poèmes, nouvelle série, mercure de france, 5th edit., 1906 (reprint of _les soirs_, 1887; _les débâcles_,1888; _les flambeaux noirs_, 1890). ----poèmes, iiième série, mercure de france, 5th edit., 1907 (reprint of _les villages illusoires_, 1895; _les apparus dans mes chemins_, 1891; _les vignes de ma muraille_, 1899). ----les villes tentaculaires, précédées des campagnes hallucinées, mercure de france, 1904. ----toute la flandre, la guirlande des dunes, deman, brussels, 1907. ----les heures claires, suivie des heures d'après-midi, mercure de france, 1909. ----les rythmes souverains, mercure de france, 2nd edit., 1910. anthologies. parnasse de la jeune belgique, vanier, paris, 1887. poètes belges d'expression française (par pol de mont), w. hilarius, almelo, 1899. anthologie des poètes français contemporains, ed. g. walch, 3 vols., ch. delagrave, paris, 1906-07. poètes d'aujourd'hui, ed. ad. van bever and paul léautaud, 2 vols., 18th edit., mercure de france, 1908. literature (selected). bazalgette (léon), émile verhaeren, sansot, paris, 1907. beaunier (andré), la poésie nouvelle, mercure de france, 1902. edwards (osman), émile verhaeren, _the savoy_, nov. 1897. gilbert (eugène), iwan gilkin, vanderpoorten, ghent, 1908. gilkin (iwan), quinze années de littérature, _la jeune belgique,_ dec. 1895. ----les origines estudiantines de la "jeune belgique" à l'université de louvain, editions de la belgique artistique et littéraire, brussels, 1909. gosso (edmund), french profiles, london, 1905. ----the romance of fairyland, with a note on a belgian ariosto, _the standard_, 27th march 1908. harry (gérard), maurice maeterlinck, translated by alfred allinson, london, 1910. hauser (otto), die belgische lyrik von 1880-1900, groszenhain, 1902. horrent (désiré), ecrivains belges d'aujourd'hui, lacomblez, brussels, 1904. kinon (victor), portraits d'auteurs, dechenne et cie., brussels, 1910. maeterlinck (georgette leblanc), maeterlinck's methods of life and work, _contemporary review_, nov. 1910. mockel (albert), émile verhaeren, mercure de franco, 1895. ----charles van lerberghe, mercure de france, 1904. ramaekers (george), émile verhaeren, edition de "la lutte," brussels, 1900. rency (georges), physionomies littéraires, dechenne et cie., brussels, 1907. schlaf (johannes), émile verhaeren, vol. xxxviii. of "die dichtung," berlin, 1905. symons (arthur), the dawn by émile verhaeren, london, 1898. ----the symbolist movement in literature, london, 1908. thompson (vance), french portraits, boston, 1900. verhaeren (émile), les lettres françaises en belgique, lamertin, brussels, 1907. visan (tancrède de), sur l'oeuvre d'alfred mockel, _vers et prose_, april-june 1909. zweig (stefan), émile verhaeren, mercure de france, 1910. ----émile verhaeren, insel-verlag, leipzig, 1910. notes. page 3.--"red cheshire." the dutch cheese so-called is "roux." braun suggests that the adjective should be translated "red-haired." page 6.--"those that we address with 'sir.'" the cheese sold under the name of "monsieur fromage." page 13, _seq_.--max elskamp's poetry is considered somewhat obscure, and students may find the following equations of help: la vierge = la femme pure; jésus = l'enfance délicieuse; un dimanche solaire = une joie éclatante; un dimanche de coeur de bois = une joie égoïste; un soldat = brutalité; un juif = un marchand; un oiseau = la vie sous la forme du verbe; une fleur = la vie sous la forme de la senteur. page 13.--"of evening." sunday is life, the week-days are death; the poet is the sunday, therefore, since the week is about to begin again, he _must_ die. the third stanza means that the truelove will never again weep for the fair days of betrothal or marriage which the old family ring she wears remind her of. page 18.--"full of cripples." by night, because then the regulations forbidding begging are more easily set at defiance. page 19, line 6.--an allusion to the painting by seghers, which represents the virgin mary with lilies, dahlias, and even snowdrops. page 23.--"here the azure cherubs blow." an allusion to the painting by fouquet in the museum at antwerp. page 47.--in huysmans' novel, _à rebours_, liqueurs are compared with musical instruments: curaçao corresponds to the clarinet; kümmel to the nasal oboe; kirsch to the fierce blast of a trumpet, etc. page 100.--song vii. "et c'est l'esclavage, n'est-ce pas? auquel s'astreint tout être qui se dévoue." beaunier. page 107.--"the running water" is the image of the human soul, constantly changing, "en devenir dans le devenir." and yet there is in it a continued, though mobile unity, a permanent _rhythm_. it objectifies itself in space, but only exists in time, and mockel sees its vital sign in those _aspirations_ which guide it towards itself, which bear it on to its fate. the unity of the mobile river, whose waves to-morrow will no longer be those they are to-day, is the continuous current that bears it, as though it aspired to the infinity of oceans. page 110.--the goblet is woman, who, whether she inspires genius or sells her body, exists, for us, less by herself than by us; she is what we make her, like this goblet whose colours vary according to what one pours into it. page 111.--the chandelier symbolizes the permanent drama enacted by art, placed as it is between the frivolous world,--which tramples the rose of love under foot,--an the immortal splendour of nature, which makes it feel its own feebleness. page 113.--the angel is the legend of genius. page 116.--the man with the lyre is the poet, who is less and less understood as he strikes the graver chords of his lyre. page 122.--the eternal bride is the aspiration towards which we strive. strive. 