Contemporary Belgian Poetry Part 22

THE SONG OF RUNNING WATER.

"The light that my embanking meadow laves Over me like a purer billow glides.

Naked in its limpid and transparent waves, It is the magnifying image wherein I Am the diaphanous shadow of the sky.

O beam!... O dream of fire that fills me ...

He, my heroic vow that with emotion thrills me, Comes!... but when his flame has lapped me wholly, From over me he rises, fleeing slowly, And in my being I can hear a being die.

Beautiful is the forest, whose O'er-leaning leaves temper my languid heat, Stripped by the wind of gold he strews, And myriad leaves are from each other singled, Dancing to fall upon their glancing selves, And playfully to emulate the frivolous deceit Of a bird's pinion with my waters mingled.

Breezes, trills of songbirds warbling with a breast that wells, All that lives and makes the forest ring retells The melody I murmur to my tall reed-gra.s.ses, Aery music that its spirit gla.s.ses.

O forest! O sweet forest, thou invitest me to rest And linger in thy shade with moss and shavegra.s.s dressed, Imprisoning me in swoon of soft caresses That o'er me droop thy dense and leafy tresses.

But on I glide, I go, and, fretful, Pa.s.s under thee, gliding away my life forgetful.

The evanescent soul, the soul where thou wert gla.s.sed, Fades, and leaves my sealed eyes nothing of the past.

Far away from me are gone All the glimpses that upon me shone.

To other forests and to other lights, Shaking my hair from fall to fall, from spate to spate, I glide with hands untied, and empty-eyed, With endless hours that fetter and control my fate.

Wandering shadow of a reverie banked and pent, Sister of all those whom my waves entrap, Intangible as a soul, and, like a soul, Unfit to seize, I roll Garlands of scattered memories, whose scent Dies in a bitter sap.

And neither who I am nor whence I am I know ...

Under my fleeting images lives but one being, That winds with all my windings whither they are fleeing ...

O thou whose tired feet I have bathed, and heavy brow, And the caress of avid hands,-- O pa.s.ser-by, my brother listening to me now!-- Hast thou not seen, from the waste mountains' threshold to my far sea-sands, Born and reborn in me, strong as the whipped flood-tides of love's emotion, The broad, unbroken current rolling me to the ocean?

Hast thou not seen, force without end, immortal rhythm and rhyme, Desire impelling me beyond the bounds of Time?"

THE GOBLET.

Every hand that touches me I greet With kisses welcoming, caresses sweet.

Thus in my crystal's naked beauty, I-- With nothing save a little gold as on my lips a dye-- Give myself wholly to the mouth unknown That seeks the burning of my own.

Queen of joy,--queen and slave,-- Mistress that taken pa.s.ses on again, Mocking the love she throws to still Desire, I have blown madness at my pleasure's will To the four winds that rave.

Say you that I am vain?

List!

I am feeble, scarcely I exist ...

Yet listen: for I can be everything.

This mouth, that never any kiss could close, Capriciously in subtle fires it blows, The jewelled garlands of a shadowy blossoming.

Tulip of gold or ruby, dense Corolla of dark purple opulence, Stem of a lilial diamond Flowered upon a limpid pond That nothing save the beak of wood-doves troubles, I am sparkling, I am singing,--and I laugh to see, Ascending in this colourless soul of me, As might a dream, a thousand iridescent bubbles.

For the lover drunken on my lips that burn, Whether he pour in turn The wines of gold and flame or love's wave to my rim, Drinks from my soul for ever strange to him A queenly splendour or the radiance of the skies, Or fury scorching where the harmful ruby lies In the bitter counsel of my jealous topazes.

And, tears or joy, delirium, daring drunkenness, From all this pa.s.sion that to his is married Nothing of me will gush unto his arid Lips, save the simple and the limpid light Whose gleam is wedded to my empty chalice.

What matter? I have given Desire his cloudland palace, And on my courtesan's bare breast Love lets the hope of his diaphanous flight Languish, and softly rest ...

And I laugh, the fragile, frivolous sister of Eve!

For me in nights of madness drunken hands upheave Higher than all foreheads to the constellated skies, And then I am the sudden star of lies, That into troubled joys darts deep its radiant gleam-- The sweet, perfidious happiness of Dream.

THE CHANDELIER.

Jewels, ribbons, naked necks, And the living bouquet that the corsage decks; Women, undulating the soft melody Of gestures languishing, surrendering ...

And the vain, scattered patter of swift words ...

Silken vestures floating, faces bright, Furtive converse, gliding glances, futile kiss Of eyes that flitting round alight like birds, And flee, and come again coquettishly; Laughter, and lying ... and all flying away To the strains that spin the frivolous swarm around.

Lo, here the burning beauty of a rose Has fallen ...

And feeble in its wasted grace it lies, Exhaling its bruised loveliness, the while, Like Love among the smiles, It dies.

Eddying skirts, gay giddiness ... the festival is closed.

While somewhat of uneasiness still palpitates, No void subsists of vanished voices; And nothing on the stained boards has remained Except a stem, a chalice,--once a rose.

But the forgotten chandelier, whose grandiose soul Unto the eyes of beauty dedicates Its glorious sheaf of fires without a goal, In halls deserted charms the solitude That nascent morning sheds his pure breeze o'er

And the dawn weaves afar its threads of light.

Know you that in the Orient, simple, earnest, bright, She whose burning soul immortal shows Arises

... O light!

Down yonder, in the deeper solitude, She who is born, and dies, and is renewed.

Life pa.s.sionately rises under the sky!

The fleeing wave has mirrored in its sheen The young smile of the golden morn, That comes across the plain where wheat and rye Grow green, and with the blonde dawn intertwine ...

Behold: consumed under the ruby shine In which its glory's arid flame exhausts itself, The chandelier is paling at the breath of Death, And burns its throes out in the face of the Sun.

THE ANGEL.

Some one here has gone to sleep.

While yet the sun is at the Heaven's rim, Under the shadows of domed ilex crests, Innocent, tired, upon the happy gra.s.s he rests, And the shadow, scarcely moving over him, Prolongs around his sleep the hem of night.

Who is this child thus dawning on our sight?

Is it to any one among you known Whence comes this adolescent, white Traveller, who has halted with us in the night?