hands its shadow lie,
To see in peaceful tides its image pale.

I wait until those nights of thine shall show
All my desires with cleansed eyes go by,
For then my dreams shall bathe in evening's glow,
And then within their crystal castle die.




THE DIVING BELL


Lo, the diver, forever within his bell!
And a whole sea of glass, a sea eternally warm!
A whole motionless world, a world of slow
green rhythms!
So many curious creatures beyond those walls
of glass,
And any contact eternally prohibited!
And yet there is so much life in those bright
waters yonder!

Look! The shadows of great sailing-ships—
they glide over the flowers, the dahlias of
the submarine forest!
And I stand for a moment in the shadow of
whales that are voyaging to the Pole!

And at this very moment, I doubt not, my
fellow-men in the harbour
Are discharging the vessels that sail hither
laden with ice:
A glacier was there, in the midst of the July meadows!
And men are swimming and floating in the
green waters of the creek,
And at noon they enter shadowy caverns...
And the breezes of ocean are fanning the roofs
and balconies.

Lo, the flaming tongues of the Gulf-Stream!
Take heed lest their kisses touch the walls of
lassitude!
They have ceased to lay ice on the brows of
the fevered,
And the patients have lit a bonfire
And are casting great handfuls of green lilies
into the flames!

Lean your brows upon the cooler panes,
While waiting for the moonlight to enter the
bell from above,
And close your eyes tightly, to the forest of colour,
The pendulous blues and albuminous violets,
And close your ears to the suggestions of the
tepid water.

Dry the brows of your desires; they are weak
with sweat.
Go firstly to those on the point of swooning.
They have the air of people celebrating a
wedding in a dungeon,
Or of people entering, at mid-day, a long lamp-lit
avenue underground;
In festival procession they are passing
Thro' a landscape like an orphaned childhood.

Go now to those about to die:
They move like virgins who have wandered far
In the sun, on a day of fast;
They are pale as patients who placidly listen
to the rain in the gardens of the hospital;
They have the look of survivors, breaking their
fast on a battle-field;
They are like prisoners who know that all their
gaolers are bathing in the river,
And who hear men mowing the grass in the
garden of the prison.




AQUARIUM


Now my desires no more, alas,
Summon my soul to my eyelids' brink,
For with its prayers that ebb and pass
It too must sink,

To lie in the depth of my closed eyes;
Only the flowers of its weary breath
Like icy blooms to the surface rise,
Lilies of death.

Its lips are sealed; in the depths of woe,
And a world away, in the far-off gloom,
They sing of azure stems that grow
A mystic bloom.

But lo, its fingers—I have grown
Pallid beholding them, I who perceive
Them trace the marks its poor unblown
Lost lilies leave.

I know it must die, for its hour is o'er:
Folding its impotent hands at last,
Hands too weary to pluck any more
The flowers of the past!




THE BURNING-GLASS


I watch the hours of long ago:
Their blue and secret depths I set
Under the burning-glass, Regret,
And watch a happier flora blow.

Hold up the glass o'er my desires!
Behold them through my soul, a glass
At memory's touch the withered grass
Breaks forth into devouring fires.

Now above my thoughts I hold
The azure crystal, in whose heart
Suddenly unfolding start
The leaves of agonies borne of old,

Until those nights remote I see
Even to memory dead so long
That their sullen tears do wrong
To the green soul of hopes to be.




REFLECTIONS


Under the brimming tide of dreams
O, my soul is full of fear!
In my heart the moon is clear;
Deep it lies in the tide of dreams.

Under the listless reeds asleep,
Only the deep reflection shows
Of palm, of lily and of rose,
Weeping yet in the waters deep;

And the flowers, late and soon,
Fall upon the mirrored sky,
To sink and sink eternally
Thro' dreamy waters and the moon.




VISIONS


All the tears that I have shed,
All my kisses, lo, they pass
Thro' my mind as in a glass:
All my kisses whose joy is dead.

There are flowers without a hue,
Lilies that under the moonlight fade,
Moonlight over the meadows laid,
Fountains far on the sky-line blue.

Weary and heavy with slumber I
See thro' the lids that slumber closes
Crows that gather amid the roses,
Sick folk under a sunbright sky.

Of these vague loves the weary smart
Shines unchanging late and soon
Like a pale slow-moving moon
Sadly into my indolent heart.




PRAYER


Thou know'st, O Lord, my spirit's dearth
Thou see'st the worth of what I bring
The evil blossoms of the earth,
The light upon a perished thing.

Thou see'st my sick and weary mood:
The moon is dark, the dawn is slain.
Thy glory on my solitude
Shed Thou like fructifying rain.

Light Thou, O Lord, beneath my feet
The way my weary soul should pass,
For now the pain of all things sweet
Is piteous as the ice-bound grass.




GLANCES


O all these poor weary glances!
And yours, and mine!
And those that are no more, and those to be!
And those that will never be, and yet exist!
There are those that seem to visit the poor on a Sabbath;
There are some like sick folk who are houseless,
There are some like lambs in a meadow full of bleaching linen;
And O, these strange