Part 2

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.