Part 5

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.

GREGOIRE 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 _chatelaines_ 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!