Chapter 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.

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.