Chapter 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!