The Love Poems (From Les Heures claires, Les Heures d'après-midi, Les Heures du Soir)

All is so pure and clear; all is so pure and so pale in the air and on the lakes of the friendly countryside, that there is anguish in the fall from a reed of a drop of water, that tinkles and then is silent in the water.

But I have your hands between mine and your steadfast eyes that hold me so gently with their earnestness; and I feel that you are so much at peace with everything that nothing, not even a fleeting suspicion of fear, will overcast, be it but for a moment, the holy trust that sleeps in us as an infant rests.

I came so late towards the gentleness of your eyes, and from so far towards your two hands stretched out quietly over the wide spaces.

I had in me so much stubborn rust that gnawed my confidence with its ravenous teeth.

I was so heavy, was so tired, I was so old with misgiving.

I was so heavy, I was so tired of the vain road of all my footsteps.

I deserved so little the wondrous joy of seeing your feet illuminate my path that I am still trembling and almost in tears, and humble, for ever and ever, before my happiness.

Vi

Sometimes you wear the kindly grace of the garden in early morning that, quiet and winding, unfolds in the blue distances its pleasant paths, curved like the necks of swans.

And, at other times, you are for me the bright thrill of the swift, exalting wind that passes with its lightning fingers through the watery mane of the white pond.

At the good touch of your two hands, I feel as though leaves were caressing me lightly; and, when midday burns the garden, the shadows at once gather up the dear words with which your being trembled.

Thus, thanks to you, each moment seems to pass in me divinely; so, at the hour of wan night, when you hide within yourself, shutting your eyes, you feel my gentle, devout gaze, humbler and longer than a prayer, thank yours beneath your closed eyelids.

Vii

Oh! let the passing hand knock with its futile fingers on the door; our hour is so unique, and the rest--what matters the rest with its futile fingers?

Let dismal, tiresome joy keep to the road and pass on with its rattles in its hand.

Let laughter swell and clatter and die away; let the crowd pass with its thousands of voices.

The moment is so lovely with light in the garden about us; the moment is so rare with virgin light in our heart deep down in us.

Everything tells us to expect nothing more from that which comes or passes, with tired songs and weary arms, on the roads,

And to remain the meek who bless the day, even when night is before us barricaded with darkness, loving in ourselves above all else the idea that, gently, we conceive of our love.

Viii

As in the simple ages, I have given you my heart, like a wide-spreading flower that opens pure and lovely in the dewy hours; within its moist petals my lips have rested.

The flower, I gathered it with fingers of flame; say nothing to it: for all words are perilous; it is through the eyes that soul listens to soul.

The flower that is my heart and my avowal confides in all simplicity to your lips that it is loyal, bright and good, and that we trust in virgin love as a child trusts in God.

Leave wit to flower on the hills in freakish paths of vanity; and let us give a simple welcome to the sincerity that holds our two true hearts within its crystalline hands;

Nothing is so lovely as a confession of souls one to the other, in the evening, when the flame of the uncountable diamonds burns like so many silent eyes the silence of the firmaments.

Ix

Young and kindly spring who clothes our garden with beauty makes lucid our voices and words, and steeps them in his limpidity.

The breeze and the lips of the leaves babble, and slowly shed in us the syllables of their brightness.

But the best in us turns away and flees material words; a mute and mild and simple rapture, better than all speech, moors our happiness to its true heaven:

The rapture of your soul, kneeling in all simplicity before mine, and of my soul, kneeling in gentleness before yours.

X

Come with slow steps and sit near the gardenbed, whose flowers of tranquil light are shut by evening; let the great night filter through you: we are too happy for our prayer to be disturbed by its sea of dread.

Above, the pure crystal of the stars is lit up; behold the firmament clearer and more translucent than a blue pond or the stained-glass window in an apse; and then behold heaven that gazes through.

The thousand voices of the vast mystery speak around you; the thousand laws of all nature are in movement about you; the silver bows of the invisible take your soul and its fervour for target,

But you are not afraid, oh! simple heart, you are not afraid, since your faith is that the whole earth works in harmony with that love that brought forth in you life and its mystery.

Clasp then your hands tranquilly, and adore gently; a great counsel of purity floats like a strange dawn beneath the midnights of the firmament.

Xi

How readily delight is aroused in her, with her eyes of fiery ecstasy, she who is gentle and resigned before life in so simple a fashion.

This evening, how a look surprised her fervour and a word transported her to the pure garden of gladness, where she was at once both queen and servant.

Humble of herself, but aglow with our two selves, she vied with me in kneeling to gather the wondrous happiness that overflowed mutually from our hearts.

We listened to the dying down in us of the violence of the exalting love imprisoned in our arms, and to the living silence that said words we did not know.

Xii

At the time when I had long suffered and the hours were snares to me, you appeared to me as the welcoming light that shines from the windows on to the snow in the depths of winter evenings.