I PROLONG our love's contents
With a pallid wine that gleams
Through glasses the colour of dreams,
And in exasperated scents. Roses! O roses still!
I love them beyond enduring.
They have the sombre alluring
Of things that we know will kill. Now summer's gold turns to ashes;
The juice of the peaches you cull
The snow of your bosom splashes. Dark is the park, without breath..
And my heart is aching, and full
Of a sweetness that suffereth. II Moon of copper. Air sick with scent..
As under a dome lamps do,
Stars burn through a balm of blue;
And in velvet flowers somnolent. The gardens are close as a tent
That incense sways heavily through.
And the waters are languorous too
On the porphyries' colours blent. No leaf's shadow will stir..
Only your red lips burn
In the lifted torch's light; And you seem, in the air of the night,
As fatal and hard as the urn
That seals a sepulchre. III Great jasmines opened wide
The dusk with odours out-wear..
As a bridegroom holds his bare
Utterly fainted bride. The maddened moth has died
In the torch's golden glare.
In the palpitating air
Your eyes dream, opened wide. Belovè d, your eyes of green,
In the dusk the perfume exhausts,
Are dreaming of tortures dire; And your nostrils, quivering keen,
In the stifling scents respire
Hearts' bleeding holocausts. IV Flower petals fall.
Dull flares the torch's mane;
Mine eyes to weep were fain,
Mine eyes possess thee all. Yielded beyond recall,
Heart, naught shall heal thee again,
O clay moulded into pain..
Flower petals fall. The roses all are dying..
I am saying nothing, thou hearest
Under thy motionless hair. Love is heavy. My soul is sighing..
What wing brushes both of us, dearest,
In the sick and soundless air?