Chapter XII

The flowers of bright welcome along the wall
await us no longer when we go indoors, and our
silken ponds whose smooth waters chafe lie
outstretched no more beneath pure, soft skies.

All the birds have fled our monotonous plains,
and pallid fogs float over the marshes. O those
two cries: autumn, winter! winter, autumn! Do you
hear the dead wood falling in the forest?

No more is our garden the husband of light,
whence the phlox were seen springing towards
their glory; our fiery gladioli are mingled with
the earth, and have lain down in their length to
die.

Everything is nerveless and void of beauty;
everything is flameless and passes and flees and
bends and sinks down unsupported. Oh! give me
your eyes lit up by your soul that I may seek in
them in spite of all a corner of the old sky.

In them alone our light lives still, the light
that covered all the garden long ago, when it
exulted with the white pride of our lilies and
the climbing ardour of our hollyhocks.