in their splendour move unshadowèd,
Upon their vital stems expose
Their cups of gold and red.

Within the garden there is healthfulness.




XXII


It was June in the garden,
It was our time, our day;
And our gaze with love on everything
Did fall;
They seemed then softly opening,
And they saw and loved us both,
The roses all.

The sky was purer than all limpid thought;
Insect and bird
Swept through the golden texture of the air,
Unheard;
Our kisses were so fair they brought
Exaltation to both light and bird.
It seemed as though a happiness at once
Had skied itself and wished the heavens entire
For its resplendent fire;
And life, all pulsing life, had entered in,
Into the fissures of our beings to the core,
To fling them higher.

And there was nothing but invocatory cries,
Mad impulses, prayers and vows that cleave
The arched skies,
And sudden yearning to create new gods,
In order to believe.




XXIII


Your gift of self is ever prodigal;
The flight that wings you higher is above,
Above cessation and all weariness,
Reaching toward the heaven of fullest love.

A clasp of hands, a glance enfevers you;
Your heart appears so beautiful and such
That I do fear your eyes, your lips, and that
I am unworthy and you love too much.

Alas! the fire and tenderness too high
For beings who have only one poor heart,
Wet with regrets and thorny with its faults,
To find but tears to weep with when they part.




XXIV


O quiet garden wherein nothing moves
Save, in the glassy lake,
The crimson fishes, each
A fiery flake.

They are the memories that play within our thought,
Calm and undistraught
And clear, as in the water's breast
Of confidence and rest.

The red fish leap and the clear water wells,
In the abrupt and potent light,
Amid the iris green and bleaching shells
And motionless stones
Around the border bright.

It is sweet to see them come and go
In all the freshness and lucidity
That bathes them so;
We have no need to fear or fret
Lest they should bring up from below
Other than a fugitive regret.




XXV


As with others, time and change and strife—
Morose time and moods of hate—
Have left their sombre scars upon our life;
But never yet our hearts have heard,
Even at close of days unfortunate,
The utterance of an unpardonable word.
Ardent, luminous sincerity
Was our wisdom and delight,
So that our fervid souls in verity
Tempered themselves as in a bath of light.

We told each other our most humble griefs,
Grief by grief, a rosary,
Told each other, weeping tears of love;
And then confidingly,
At each avowal, with our lips we pressed
A kiss on every fault confessed.

Thus simply, without weakness or despair,
We save us from ourselves and worldly harms,
And ward off suffering and gnawing care,
And see our spirits born again;
As reappear when washed by rain,
When sunlight sweetly dries and warms,
The purity of glass and gold of window pane.




XXVI


The golden ships of summer time
That left this morning, mad with space,
Return now from the blood-red west,
Sad, with slackened pace.

Over the ocean now they come,
Moved by listless, weary rowers;
They seem like cradles in the sky
Where sleep the autumn flowers.

Lilies, with your faded brows,
You have felt the wind's keen breath;
Only the flaming roses strive
To live beyond all death.

What matter for their fullest flower
October days or April bright?
They have but simple wish to drink,
Even the sanguine, light;

On sombre days, when under clouds
Haggardly the heavens hide,
They will, for one lone ray of sun,
Exalt at Christmastide.

You, oh spirits, live like them!
They have not pride that lilies feel,
But hold within their folds a sacred
And immortal zeal.




XXVII


Fervency of sense, of heart, of soul—
Vain words created to despoil love's powers;
Sun, you distinguish not between your flames
Of all your evening, dawn, or midday hours.

You move all blinded by your proper light
Through blazing space, beneath the arched sky,
Knowing alone that your great, ample power
Works at things mysterious and high.

For love means exaltation's ceaseless deeds;
Oh you whose sweetness sweetens my proud heart,
What need to weigh the pure gold of our dream?
I love you wholly, with my every part.




XXVIII


The moveless beauty
Of the summer evenings,
Upon the grass where they deploy,
Gives with symbolic offerings,
Gestureless, without a word,
The deep repose of joy.

Morning with its surprises
Has gone where no wind rises;
Midday itself with folds of velvet air
No longer sinks upon the torpid plain;
Now is the hour when the evening once again
Without a moving leaf or ripple on lake breast,
Comes down from lofty hills
To our garden where
It seeks its rest.

Oh golden splendour of the burnished lake,
And trees and shadows of them on the reeds,
And tranquil sumptuous silences
That take
Immutably the kingdom of our hearts,
So that within us now a vow we cherish
Of it to live and die and live again,
Like two hearts drunk almost to pain
With light,
Who cannot perish!




XXIX


You spoke that evening words so beautiful
That even the flowers, leaning on the breeze,
Suddenly loved us so that one of them,
To touch us both, fell down upon our knees.

You spoke of the near time when our two lives,
Like too-ripe fruits, would be upgathered,
And how the tocsin of our fate would knell,
And love be with us still, though youth had fled.

Your voice was round me like a close embrace,
Your burning heart so quiet and so brave,
I would have seen unfold without a fear
The winding road that leads toward the grave.




XXX


"Sun-lit Hours," "Hours of Afternoon,"
Hours superbly now a part of us!
Your