Chapter XVIII

In the garden of our love, summer still goes
on: yonder, a golden peacock crosses an avenue;
petals--pearls, emeralds, turquoises --deck the
uniform slumber of the green swards.

Our blue ponds shimmer, covered with the
white kiss of the snowy water-lilies; in the
quincunxes, our currant bushes follow one another
in procession; an iridescent insect teases the
heart of a flower; the marvellous undergrowths
are veined with gleams; and, like light bubbles,
a thousand bees quiver along the arbours over the
silver grapes.

The air is so lovely that it seems rainbow-hued;
beneath the deep and radiant noons, it stirs
as if it were roses of light; while, in the
distance, the customary roads, like slow
movements stretching their vermilion to the
pearly horizon, climb towards the sun.

Indeed, the diamonded gown of this fine
summer clothes no other garden with so pure a
brightness. And the unique joy sprung up in
our two hearts discovers its own life in these
clusters of flames.

XIX

May your bright eyes, your eyes of summer, be for
me here on earth the images of goodness.

Let our enkindled souls clothe with gold each
flame of our thoughts.

May my two hands against your heart be for you
here on earth the emblems of gentleness.

Let us live like two frenzied prayers straining
at all hours one towards the other.

May our kisses on our enraptured mouths be for us
here on earth the symbols of our life.

XX

Tell me, my simple and tranquil sweetheart, tell
me how much an absence, even of a day, saddens
and stirs up love, and reawakens it in all its
sleeping scalds?

I go to meet those who are returning from the
wondrous distances to which at dawn you went; I
sit beneath a tree at a bend of the path, and, on
the road, watching their coming, I gaze and gaze
earnestly at their eyes still bright with having
seen you.

And I would kiss their fingers that have touched
you, and cry out to them words they would not
understand; and I listen a long while to the
rhythm of their steps towards the shadow where
the old evenings hold night prone.

XXI

During those hours wherein we are lost so far
from all that is not ourselves, what lustral
blood or what baptism bathes our hearts that
strain towards all love?

Clasping our hands without praying, stretching
out our arms without crying aloud, but with
earnest and ingenuous mind worshipping something
farther off and purer than ourselves, we know not
what, how we blend with, how we live our lives
in, the unknown.

How overwhelmed we are in the presence of those
hours of supreme existence; how the soul desires
heavens in which to seek for new gods.

Oh! the torturing and wondrous joy and the daring
hope of being one day, across death itself, the
prey of these silent terrors.

XXII

Oh! this happiness, sometimes so rare and frail
that it frightens us!

In vain we hush our voices, and make of all your
hair a tent to shelter us; often the anguish in
our hearts flows over.

But our love, being like a kneeling angel, begs
and supplicates that the future give to others
than ourselves a like affection and life, so that
their fate may not be envious of ours.

And, too, on evil days, when the great evenings
extend to heaven the bounds of despair, we ask
forgiveness of the night that kindles with the
gentleness of our heart.

XXIII

Let us, in our love and ardour, let us live so
boldly our finest thoughts that they interweave
in harmony with the supreme ecstasy and perfect
fervour.

Because in our kindred souls something more holy
than we and purer and greater awakens, let us
clasp hands to worship it through ourselves.

It matters not that we have only cries or tears
to define it humbly, and that its charm is so
rare and powerful that, in the enjoyment of it,
our hearts are nigh to failing us.

Even so, let us remain, and for ever, the mad
devotees of this almost implacable love, and the
kneeling worshippers of the sudden God who reigns
in us, so violent and so ardently gentle that he
hurts and overwhelms us.