Emile Verhaeren

“ It was June in the garden, our hour and our day, and our eyes looked upon all things with so great a love that the roses seemed to us to open gently, and to see and love us.
The sky was purer than it had ever been: the insects and birds floated in the gold and gladness of an air as frail as silk, and our kisses were so exquisite that they gave an added beauty to the sunshine and the birds.
It was as though our happiness had suddenly become azure, and required the whole sky wherein to shine; through gentle openings, all life entered our being, to expand it. ”

“ I look at you and I discover you each day, so intimate is your gentleness or your pride: time indeed obscures the eyes of your beauty, but it exalts your heart, whose golden depths peep open.
Artlessly, you allow yourself to be probed and known, and your soul always appears fresh and new; with gleaming masts, like an eager caravel, our happiness covers the seas of our desires.
It is in us alone that we anchor our faith, to naked sincerity and simple goodness; we move and live in the brightness of a joyous and translucent trust. ”

“ I see your mouth and your great eyes glow no more like a morning of festival, nor your head slowly recline in the black and massive garden of your hair.
Your dear hands, that remain so gentle, approach no more as in former years with light at their finger-tips to caress my forehead, as dawn the mosses.
Your young and lovely body that I adorned with my thoughts has no longer the pure freshness of dew, and your arms are no longer like the bright branches.
Alas! everything falls and fades ceaselessly; everything has changed, even your voice ”

“ Ardour of senses, ardour of hearts, ardour of souls, vain words created by those who diminish love; sun, you do not distinguish among your flames those of evening, of dawn, or of noon!
You walk blinded by your own light in the torrid azure under the great arched skies, knowing nothing, unless it be that your strength is all-powerful and that your fire labours at the divine mysteries.
For love is an act of ceaseless exaltation. O you whose gentleness bathes my proud heart, what need to weigh the pure gold of our dream? ”

“ But before the flames of the golden hearth of memory, we will both crouch and warm our hands and knees.
To guard against the sorrows hidden in the future, against time that makes an end of all ardour, against our terror and even against ourselves, we will both crouch near the hearth that our memory has lit up in us.
And if autumn involves the woods, the lawns and the ponds in great banks of shadow and soaring storms, at least its pain shall not disturb the inner quiet garden where the equal footsteps of our thoughts walk together in the light. ”

“ To love with our eyes, let us lave our gaze of the gaze of those whose glances we have crossed, by thousands, in life that is evil and enthralled.
The dawn is of flowers and dew and the mildest sifted light; soft plumes of silver and sun seem through the mists to brush and caress the mosses in the garden.
Our blue and marvellous ponds quiver and come to life with shimmering gold; emerald wings pass under the trees; and the brightness sweeps from the roads, the garths and the hedges the damp ashen fog in which the twilight still lingers. ”

“ Gently, more gently still, kiss my lips, and say to me those words that are sweeter at each dawn when your voice repeats them, and you have surrendered, and I love you still.
The day rises sullen and heavy; the night was crossed by monstrous dreams; the rain and its long hair whip our casement, and the horizon is black with clouds of grief.
Gently, more gently still, cradle my head in your arms, my fevered brow and my weary eyes; you are my hopeful dawn, with its caress in your hands and its light in your sweet words ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the depth of our love dwells all faith; we bind up a glowing thought together with the least things: the awakening of a bud, the decline of a rose, the flight of a frail and beautiful bird that, by turns, appears or disappears in the shadow or the light.
A nest falling to pieces on the mossy edge of a roof and ravaged by the wind fills the mind with dread. An insect eating the heart of the hollyhocks terrifies: all is fear, all is hope. ”

“ For we live all the flowers, all the plants and all the grasses in our laughter and our tears of pure and calm happiness.
For we live all the transparencies of the blue pond that reflects the rich growths of the golden roses and the great vermilion lilies, sun-lips and mouths.
For we live all joy, thrown out in the cries of festival and spring of our avowals, wherein heartfelt and uplifting words sing side by side.
Oh! is it not indeed in us that grows the pleasantest and the gladdest garden in the world? ”

“ And the pleasant shade that welcomes our feet after the long roads pours into our tired limbs a quickening strength, gentle as the garden's mosses.
When the pond plays with the wind and the sun, a ruddy heart seems to dwell in the depths of the water, and to beat, ardent and young, with the ripples; and the tall, straight gladioli and the glowing roses that move in their splendour hold out their golden goblets of red blood at the end of their living stalks.
Our bright garden is health itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dawn, darkness, evening, space and the stars; that which the night conceals or shows between its veils is mingled with the fervour of our exalted being. Those who live with love live with eternity.
It matters not that their reason approve or scoff, and, upright on its high walls, hold out to them, along the quays and harbours, its bright torches; they are the travellers from beyond the sea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When your head bends to my deep-felt kiss, what does it matter to me that your brow is furrowed, and that your hands are becoming ridged with hard veins when I hold them between my two steadfast hands!
You never complain, and you believe firmly that nothing true dies when love receives its meed, and that the living fire on which our soul feeds consumes even grief to increase its flame. ”

“ Everything that lives about us in the fragile and gentle light, frail grasses, tender branches, hollyhocks, and the shadow that brushes them lightly by, and the wind that knots them, and the singing and hopping birds that swarm riotously in the sun like clusters of jewels,— everything that lives in the fine ruddy garden loves us artlessly, and we—we love everything. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The gift of yourself no longer satisfies you; you are prodigal of yourself: the rapture that bears you on to ever greater love springs up in you ceaselessly and untiringly, and carries you ever higher towards the wide heaven of perfect love. ”

“ O beautiful luminous fruits in these autumn shadows, jewels fallen from the heavy necklace of russet summer, splendours that light up our monotonous hours, what a ruddy and spacious awakening you stir up in us!
IX
And now that the lofty leaves have fallen, that kept our garden sheltered beneath their shade, through the bare branches can be seen beyond them the roofs of the old villages climbing towards the horizon. ”

“ Intense and wholesome life in all its divine strength enters your bosom so completely, like a driving happiness, that to contain its anguish and its fury, your hands suddenly take mine, and press them almost fearfully against your heart. ”

“ Happy and serene, they believe eagerly; their soul is the deep and sudden brightness with which they burn the summit of the loftiest problems; and to know the world, they but scrutinize themselves.
They follow distant roads chosen by themselves, living with the truths enclosed within their simple, naked eyes, that are deep and gentle as the dawn ”

“ We feel our hearts to be so divinely fresh and so renewed by their virgin light that, in their brightness, the universe is made manifest to us.
In our eyes, joy is the only ferment of the world that ripens and becomes fruitful innumerably on our roads here below; as in clusters spring up among the silken lakes on which sails travel the myriad blossoms of the stars above. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Shall we suffer, alas! the dead weight of the years until at length we are no more than two quiet people, exchanging the harmless kisses of children at evening when the fire flames in the hollow of the chimney?
Shall our dear furniture see us drag ourselves with slow steps from the hearth to the beechen chest, support ourselves by the wall to reach the window, and huddle our tottering bodies on heavy seats? ”

“ And we live thus with the flowers and the grass, simple and pure, glowing and exalted, lost in our love, like the sheaves in the gold of the corn, and proudly allowing the imperious summer to pierce our bodies, our hearts and our two wills with its full brightness. ”

“ Order dazzles us as fire embers, everything bathes us in its light and appears a torch to us: our simple words have a sense so lovely that we repeat them to hear them without end.
We are the sublime conquerors who vanquish eternity without pride and without a thought of trifling time: and our love seems to us always to have been. ”

“ See, I am re-born, without pain or shock, to the daily labour that traces its mark on my road, and instils into my life the will to be a weapon of strength and beauty in the golden grasp of an honoured life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus, very simply, without baseness or bitter words, we escaped from the world and from ourselves, sparing ourselves all grief and gnawing cares, and watching the rebirth of our soul, as the purity of glass and gold of a window-pane is reborn after the rain, when the sun warms it and gently dries it. ”

“ See, the dawn whitens the ground that is the colour of lees of wine; shadowy bonds seem to slip and glide away with melancholy; the water of the ponds grows bright and sifts its noise; the grass glitters and the flowers open, and the golden woods free themselves from the night. ”

“ Oh! how beautiful and young still our life is when the clock rings out with its golden tone, and, coming closer, I brush you lightly and touch you, and a slow and gentle fever that neither desires to allay leads the sure and wondrous kiss from the hands to the forehead and from the forehead to the lips. ”

“ We worship the lilies we see growing; and the tall sunflowers, brighter than the Nadir— circles surrounded by petals of flames—burn our souls through their glow.
The simplest flowers, the phlox and the lilac, grow along the walls among the feverfew, to be nearer to our footsteps; and the involuntary weeds in the turf over which we have passed open their eyes wet with dew. ”

“ O Sun, who bring forth and deliver, O immense friend of whom our pride has need, be it that at the new, solemn and imperious hour when my old human heart will be heavy under the proof, you will come once more to visit it and witness. ”

“ My desires had become no more than evil weeds; they bit at each other like thistles in the wind; I felt my heart to be at once ice and burning coal and of a sudden dried up and stubborn in forgiveness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And our soul, as though made greater in this awakening, began to celebrate all that loves, magnifying love for love's sake, and to cherish divinely, with a wild desire, the whole world that is summed up in us. ”