Chapter 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 SEVERIN.

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.

EMILE 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.