Part 3

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.