Chapter 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.