Chapter VIII

As in the simple ages, I have given you my heart,
like a wide-spreading flower that opens pure and
lovely in the dewy hours; within its moist petals
my lips have rested.

The flower, I gathered it with fingers of flame;
say nothing to it: for all words are perilous; it
is through the eyes that soul listens to soul.

The flower that is my heart and my avowal
confides in all simplicity to your lips that it
is loyal, bright and good, and that we trust in
virgin love as a child trusts in God.

Leave wit to flower on the hills in freakish
paths of vanity; and let us give a simple welcome
to the sincerity that holds our two true hearts
within its crystalline hands;

Nothing is so lovely as a confession of souls
one to the other, in the evening, when the flame
of the uncountable diamonds burns like so many
silent eyes the silence of the firmaments.

IX

Young and kindly spring who clothes our garden
with beauty makes lucid our voices and words, and
steeps them in his limpidity.

The breeze and the lips of the leaves babble,
and slowly shed in us the syllables of their
brightness.

But the best in us turns away and flees material
words; a mute and mild and simple rapture, better
than all speech, moors our happiness to its true
heaven:

The rapture of your soul, kneeling in all
simplicity before mine, and of my soul, kneeling
in gentleness before yours.