The Evening Hours

Iv

Draw your chair to mine And stretch your hands to the hearth', That I may see between your fingers Shine The ancient flame; And look upon the fire Quietly, with your eyes That have no fear of any light, So that for me they be the same, Yet franker when the blaze leaps higher Making them as from deep within you, bright.

Ah, how fair still is our life and fain! When the clock strikes out its notes of gold And I approach you and as a flower hold; And a fever slow and pure, Which we will not to restrain, Leads the kiss, marvellous and sure, From hand to brow, from brow to lips again.

How well I love you, O my clear beloved, Your swooning body, caressing and caressed, In whose depth of joy I almost drown. All is more dear to me, your lips, your arms close-pressed, And your kind bosom whereon my tired head After the rapture you bestow, sinks down Quietly, near your heart to find its rest.

I love you still more after love's sharp pain When your goodness still more sure and motherly Brings repose to passion's ardency, And, when desire has cried aloud its will, I hear approach familiar joy again, With steps that almost silence are, it is so still.

V

Be kind and comforting to us, oh light! And bathe our foreheads now, oh wintry ray! When we two issue forth this afternoon To breathe together the last warmth of day.

We loved you formerly with such a pride, With such a love as our two souls could lend, That a supreme and sweet and friendly flame Is due us now that we await the end.

You are that which no man may forget, From dawn that smites his arm unconquered To evening when you sleep within his eyes Your strength abolished and your splendour dead.

Always for us you were the seen desire Spreading through all, luminous and free, That with impassioned ardour deep and high Seemed from our heart to seek infinity.

Vi

Alas the time of crimson phlox is past And of proud roses brightening the gate. What matter? Still I love with all my heart Our garden, tho' deflow'red and desolate.

More dear than are the joyous summer noons, My garden is that now forlornly grieves; Oh the last perfumes languidly exhaled By a late flower in the lingering leaves!

This evening I wandered in the paths Over the plants my fervent touch to pass, And falling on my knees I pressed my lips To the wet earth among the trembling grass.

And now that it is dying and the night Has misted all the garden with its breath, My being that so dwells in all this ruin Shall learn to die in sharing thus its death.

Before the day is spent Go out and wander in the garden walks And pluck with gentle hands The few remaining flowers that on their stalks Are not yet sadly bent toward the mould.

What matter if their foliage be wan? We still admire and love, And still their chalices are beautiful above The stems they rest upon.

You wander mid the borders here and there Along a lonely path, And the flowers you bear Tremble in your hand that shudders as it takes. And now your dreamy fingers Reverently shape the sere Roses wherein autumn lingers, Weaving them with many a tear, Into a crown of pale, clear flakes.

The last light dwells upon your eyes and brow And your slow steps are sad and quiet now....

Slowly, at the vesper, through the gloam, With empty hands you wandered home, Leaving, upon a little humid mound, On the path that to our doorway led, The pale circlet that your fingers bound. And I knew that in our garden perished, Where winds now pass like cohorts over-head, You would give flower again for one last time, To our youth that lies upon the ground Dead....

Viii

When you store away in fragrant shelves, Some autumn eve, the fruits of orchard trees, I seem to see you calmly ranging there Our old, but fresh and perfumed memories.

And love returns for them as once they were, The wind on lips and sunlight in my eyes; I see the vanished moments once again, Their joy, their mirth, their fevers and their cries.

The past comes back to life with such desire To be the present with its force again, That half-extinct fires burn with sudden flame, My heart exults and swoons as though in pain.

Oh fruits that glow amid the autumn shadows, Jewels fallen from the summer's string Of gems, illumining our sombre hours, What red awakening is this you bring!

Ix

Fallen is the leafage from above That covered all the garden with its shade; See, between the naked boughs far off The village roofs to the horizon fade.

While summer flamed its joy, neither of us Saw them clustered there so near our home; But to-day, with leaf and flower dead, Into our thinking they more often come.

Others are living there behind those walls And those worn thresholds with the porch above, Having for only friends the wind and rain And the lighted lamp to give them love.

In the fall of eve, when fires are lit, And the pauses of the clock they heed, Dear, as to us, the silence is to them, The thoughts within their eyes that they may read.

Those hours of intimacy naught disturbs, Of tender and profound tranquillity, Blessing the instant past for having been And finding dearer yet the one to be.

See how they hold between their trembling hands A happiness of pain and pleasure born; Known to each the other's body old And aged eyes by the same sorrows worn.

The flowers of their life, they love them faded, The final perfume and the beauty brief, And heavy memory of glory waning, Wasting in time's garden, leaf by leaf.

Deep in their warmth of human feeling hid, From the winter sheltered and reduse, Nothing abases them or makes them pine And plead for days they are content to lose.

The quiet folk of those old villages, What neighbours are they to our happiness! And how we find our own tears in their eyes, Our strength and ardour in their fearlessness!

Down there, beneath their roofs, by windowside Or seated by the glowing fireside, thus, Perhaps on such a night of wind and wet, What we have thought of them they think of us.