days
With love as luminous as high,
But age to-day has made us weak
With faults we dare deny.

Thou dost not nourish us, oh will,
By thine ardour in the strife,
But soft benevolence alone
Colours now our life.

We near thy brink of setting, Love,
And try to hide our frailty's pain
In banal words and poor discourse
Of wisdom slow and vain.

How sad the future then would be,
If when our days grow wintrier
There flame not forth the memory
Of the proud souls we were.




XXIII


This wrinkled winter when the ruined sun
Founders in the west and sinks below,
I love to say your name, so grave and slow,
While the clock strikes another day now done.

And saying it so ravishes my voice
That from my lips it sinks into my heart,
And among all sweet words that there have part,
Makes me the most ardently rejoice.

And in the wind of dawn or evening's breath
Changeless I reiterate the theme;
Oh, think with what a passion, strong, supreme,
Shall I pronounce it at the hour of death!




XXIV


Perhaps,
On my last day,
Perhaps,
Across my window sill,
The sunlight frail and still
Will fall and for a moment stay....

My hands—my hands then poor and witherèd—
By its glory will be made to gold;
Slowly its kiss will glide, profound and bright,
For the last time upon my mouth and head;
And the flowers of my eyes, pale yet bold,
Before they close, shall render back its light.

Sun, I loved your strength and clarity, indeed!
My sweet and fiery poems at their height
Have held you captive in the heart of them;
Like field of wheat that surges in the might
Of summer wind my words exalted you.
Oh sun, who bring to birth and flower the stem,
Oh immense friend, of whom our pride has need,
In that so grave, imperious hour and new,
When my old heart sadly endures the test,
Be you still its witness and its guest!




XXV


Clasped about my neck and harbouring my breast,
Ah your so dear hands now and their slow caress,
When I tell you, in the evening, how my strength
Grows leaden day by day with weight of feebleness!

You wish it not that 1 become shadow and ruin
Like all those who obey the gloomy night's behests,
Though it be with laurel in their mournful hands
And glory sleeping in their hollow breasts.

Ah how time's harsh law is softened by your love
And how your lovely dream disconsolate tears would stem;
For the first and only time you nurse with lies
My heart that finds excuse and gives you thanks for them.

Which, however, knows all ardour is in vain
Against what is and all that must be in the strife,
And that perhaps there is profounder happiness
To end thus in your eyes my lovely human life.




XXVI


When you shall close these eyes of mine to light,
Oh kiss them long—for all that love afire
May hope to give they shall have given you
In that last look of ultimate desire.

Beneath the moveless glow of candle light,
Oh lean to them your face so fain and brave
That on them be impressed this sight alone
That they shall keep forever in the grave.

And may I