Chapter IX

And now that the lofty leaves have fallen, that
kept our garden sheltered beneath their shade,
through the bare branches can be seen beyond them
the roofs of the old villages climbing towards
the horizon.

So long as summer poured out its gladness, none
of us saw them grouped so near our door; but now
that the flowers and the leaves are withered, we
often brood on them with gentle thoughts.

Other people live there between stone walls,
behind a worn threshold protected by a coping,
having as sole friends but the wind and the rain
and the lamp shining with its friendly light.

In the darkness at the fall of evening, when the
fire awakens and the clock in which time swings
is hushed, doubtless, as much as we, they love
the silence, to feel themselves thinking through
their eyes.

Nothing disturbs for them or for us those hours
of deep and quiet and tender intimacy wherein the
moment that was is blessed for having been, and
of which the coming hour is always the best.

Indeed, how they also clench the old happiness,
made up of pain and joy, within their trembling
hands; they know each other's bodies that have
grown old together, and each other's looks worn
out by the same sorrows.

The roses of their life, they love them faded,
with their dead glory and their last perfume and
the heavy memory of their dead brightness falling
away, leaf by leaf, in the garden of the years.

Against black winter, like hermits, they stay
crouching within their human fervour, and nothing
disheartens them and nothing leads them to
complain of the days they no longer possess.

Oh! the quiet people in the depths of old
villages! Indeed, do we not feel them neighbours
of our heart! And do we not find in their eyes
our tears and in their courage our strength and
ardour!

They are there beneath their roof, seated
around fires, or lingering sometimes at their
window-sill; and on this evening of spacious,
floating wind, perhaps they have thought of us
what we think of them.