Chapter XVI

How happy we are still and proud of living when
the least ray of sunshine glimpsed in the heavens
lights up for a moment the poor flowers of rime
that the hard and delicate frost engraved on our
window-panes.

Rapture leaps in us and hope carries us away, and
our old garden appears to us again, in spite of
its long paths strewn with dead branches, living
and pure and bright and full of golden gleams.

Something shining and undaunted, I know not what,
creeps into our blood; and in the quick kisses
that, ardently, frantically, we give each other,
we re-embody the immensity and fulness of summer.