The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Evening HoursThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Evening HoursAuthor: Emile VerhaerenTranslator: Charles Royier MurphyRelease date: April 24, 2014 [eBook #45467]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marc D'Hooghe (Images generously made available by the Internet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVENING HOURS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Evening HoursAuthor: Emile VerhaerenTranslator: Charles Royier MurphyRelease date: April 24, 2014 [eBook #45467]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marc D'Hooghe (Images generously made available by the Internet Archive)
Title: The Evening Hours
Author: Emile VerhaerenTranslator: Charles Royier Murphy
Author: Emile Verhaeren
Translator: Charles Royier Murphy
Release date: April 24, 2014 [eBook #45467]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Marc D'Hooghe (Images generously made available by the Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVENING HOURS ***
I."Tender Flowers, Light as the Sea's Foam"II."If It Be True"III."Dead is the Glycin and the Hawthorne Flower"IV."Draw Your Chair to Mine"V."Be Kind and Comforting to Us, Oh Light!"VI."Alas, the Time of Crimson Phlox is Past"VII."The Evening Falls, the Moon is Gold"VIII."When You Store Away in Fragrant Shelves"IX."Fallen is the Leafage from Above"X."When the Star-lit Heaven Broods Above Our House"XI."That Very Love Which Made You be for Me"XII."Those Clear Welcoming Flowers Along the Wall's Extent"XIII."When the Diamond Grains of Fresh Snow"XIV."If Fate Has Saved Us from the Banal Sins"XV."No, My Soul Has Never Tired of You!"XVI."Ah, we are Happy Still and Proud to Live"XVII."Alas, Must We Accept the Weight of Years"XVIII."All Little Facts, the Things of No Account"XIX."Come to Our Threshold Now, Oh Snow"XX."When Our Clear Garden Lifted up Its Flow'rs"XXI."With Withered Hands I Touch Your Brow"XXII."Our Hearts Once Burned in Joyous Days"XXIII."This Wrinkled Winter when the Ruined Sun"XXIV."Perhaps"XXV."Clasped About My Neck and Harbouring My Breast"XXVI."When You Shall Close These Eyes of Mine to Light"
ITender flowers, light as the sea's foam,Graced our garden way;The lapsing wind would give your hands caressAnd with your hair would play.The shade was kind to our united stepsThat wandered soberly;And from the village a child's song aroseTo fill infinity.Our ponds extended in the autumn lightBeneath the guarding reed,And the wood's forehead showed its mobile crownTo pools upon the mead.And we, who knew our hearts were murmuringIn union but one prayer,Thought that it was our peaceful life the eveShowed unveiled there.Supremely then you saw the sky aglowFor a farewell caress;And long and long you looked on it with eyesFilled with mute tenderness.IIIf it be trueThat garden flower or meadow treeMay hold still any memoryOf lovers past who once looked onTheir splendour or their purity,So shall our love return once moreIn that long hour of long regretTo give the rose, or in the oak restore,Its sweetness or its strength,Ere death come yet.Thus shall it survive unconqueredWithin the glory that belongs to simple things,And find a joy again, in light that cleavesThe sky on summer break of day,And find a joy againIn the sweet rainThat dwells in drops on hanging leaves.And if on some fair eve, from depths of space,Should come two lovers hand in hand,The oak, like a large and puissant wingWould reach its shadow out to where they stand,And the rose would give them of its perfumed grace.IIIDead is the glycin and the hawthorne flower;But now is the time when heather-bloom is seen,And on this so calm eve the rustling windBrings you the fragrance of the starved Campine.Love and breathe them, thinking of its fate;Over that rugged soil the storm-wind lives;Sand and sea have made of it their prey,Yet of the little left, it ever gives.Of old, though autumn came, we dwelled with it,With plain and forest, with the storm and light,Until the angels of the Christmas timeInscribed its legend with their winged flight.Your heart became more simple and more sure;We loved the villagers and the forlornOld women who would speak of their great ageAnd of old spinning-wheels their hands had worn.Our quiet house upon the misty heathWas frank and welcoming to all who came;Its roof was dear to us, its door and sill,And hearth long blackened by familiar flame.When over vast, pale, measureless reposeThe total splendour of the night was set,A lesson of deep silence we received,Whose ardour never shall our souls forget.Since we were more alone amid the plain,The dawn and evening entered more our thought,Our eyes were franker and our hearts more sweetAnd with the world's desire more fully fraught.We found content in not exacting it;The sadness, even, of the days was kind,And the rare sunlight of the autumn's endCharmed us the more that it seemed weak and blind.Dead is the glycin and the hawthorne flower;But now are the days when heather-bloom is seen,Remember these, and let the rustling windBring you the fragrance of the starved Campine.IVDraw your chair to mineAnd stretch your hands to the hearth',That I may see between your fingersShineThe ancient flame;And look upon the fireQuietly, with your eyesThat have no fear of any light,So that for me they be the same,Yet franker when the blaze leaps higherMaking them as from deep within you, bright.Ah, how fair still is our life and fain!When the clock strikes out its notes of goldAnd I approach you and as a flower hold;And a fever slow and pure,Which we will not to restrain,Leads the kiss, marvellous and sure,From hand to brow, from brow to lips again.How well I love you, O my clear beloved,Your swooning body, caressing and caressed,In whose depth of joy I almost drown.All is more dear to me, your lips, your arms close-pressed,And your kind bosom whereon my tired headAfter the rapture you bestow, sinks downQuietly, near your heart to find its rest.I love you still more after love's sharp painWhen your goodness still more sure and motherlyBrings repose to passion's ardency,And, when desire has cried aloud its will,I hear approach familiar joy again,With steps that almost silence are, it is so still.VBe kind and comforting to us, oh light!And bathe our foreheads now, oh wintry ray!When we two issue forth this afternoonTo breathe together the last warmth of day.We loved you formerly with such a pride,With such a love as our two souls could lend,That a supreme and sweet and friendly flameIs due us now that we await the end.You are that which no man may forget,From dawn that smites his arm unconqueredTo evening when you sleep within his eyesYour strength abolished and your splendour dead.Always for us you were the seen desireSpreading through all, luminous and free,That with impassioned ardour deep and highSeemed from our heart to seek infinity.VIAlas the time of crimson phlox is pastAnd of proud roses brightening the gate.What matter? Still I love with all my heartOur garden, tho' deflow'red and desolate.More dear than are the joyous summer noons,My garden is that now forlornly grieves;Oh the last perfumes languidly exhaledBy a late flower in the lingering leaves!This evening I wandered in the pathsOver the plants my fervent touch to pass,And falling on my knees I pressed my lipsTo the wet earth among the trembling grass.And now that it is dying and the nightHas misted all the garden with its breath,My being that so dwells in all this ruinShall learn to die in sharing thus its death.VIIThe evening falls, the moon is gold....Before the day is spentGo out and wander in the garden walksAnd pluck with gentle handsThe few remaining flowers that on their stalksAre not yet sadly bent toward the mould.What matter if their foliage be wan?We still admire and love,And still their chalices are beautiful aboveThe stems they rest upon.You wander mid the borders here and thereAlong a lonely path,And the flowers you bearTremble in your hand that shudders as it takes.And now your dreamy fingersReverently shape the sereRoses wherein autumn lingers,Weaving them with many a tear,Into a crown of pale, clear flakes.The last light dwells upon your eyes and browAnd your slow steps are sad and quiet now....Slowly, at the vesper, through the gloam,With empty hands you wandered home,Leaving, upon a little humid mound,On the path that to our doorway led,The pale circlet that your fingers bound.And I knew that in our garden perished,Where winds now pass like cohorts over-head,You would give flower again for one last time,To our youth that lies upon the groundDead....VIIIWhen you store away in fragrant shelves,Some autumn eve, the fruits of orchard trees,I seem to see you calmly ranging thereOur old, but fresh and perfumed memories.And love returns for them as once they were,The wind on lips and sunlight in my eyes;I see the vanished moments once again,Their joy, their mirth, their fevers and their cries.The past comes back to life with such desireTo be the present with its force again,That half-extinct fires burn with sudden flame,My heart exults and swoons as though in pain.Oh fruits that glow amid the autumn shadows,Jewels fallen from the summer's stringOf gems, illumining our sombre hours,What red awakening is this you bring!IXFallen is the leafage from aboveThat covered all the garden with its shade;See, between the naked boughs far offThe village roofs to the horizon fade.While summer flamed its joy, neither of usSaw them clustered there so near our home;But to-day, with leaf and flower dead,Into our thinking they more often come.Others are living there behind those wallsAnd those worn thresholds with the porch above,Having for only friends the wind and rainAnd the lighted lamp to give them love.In the fall of eve, when fires are lit,And the pauses of the clock they heed,Dear, as to us, the silence is to them,The thoughts within their eyes that they may read.Those hours of intimacy naught disturbs,Of tender and profound tranquillity,Blessing the instant past for having beenAnd finding dearer yet the one to be.See how they hold between their trembling handsA happiness of pain and pleasure born;Known to each the other's body oldAnd aged eyes by the same sorrows worn.The flowers of their life, they love them faded,The final perfume and the beauty brief,And heavy memory of glory waning,Wasting in time's garden, leaf by leaf.Deep in their warmth of human feeling hid,From the winter sheltered and reduse,Nothing abases them or makes them pineAnd plead for days they are content to lose.The quiet folk of those old villages,What neighbours are they to our happiness!And how we find our own tears in their eyes,Our strength and ardour in their fearlessness!Down there, beneath their roofs, by windowsideOr seated by the glowing fireside, thus,Perhaps on such a night of wind and wet,What we have thought of them they think of us.XWhen the star-lit heaven broods above our houseWe sit in silence during many hoursBeneath its soft intensity of lightTo feel more ardent still these selves of ours.The silver stars are drifting on their way;Beneath their flame and all their glisteningThe great night is deeper and more deep;Such calm there is, the sea is listening!What matter if the sea itself be still,If in this infinity so fair,Pregnant now with yet unvisioned power,Our beating hearts make all the silence there?XIThat very love which made you be for meA splendid garden wherein moving tree,Made shadow over sward and docile rose,Makes you the shelter where I now repose.There garnered are your flowers of desire,Your lucent goodness and your gentle fire;But all within a peace profound are furledAgainst harsh winter winds that scar the world.My happiness is warmed within your arms;Each little tender word you whisper charmsMy ear with as familiar a delightAs in the time when lilacs blossomed white.Your clear and merry humour daily cheersAnd triumphs over the distress of years;And you yourself smile at the silver hairsThat your lovely head so gaily wears.When to my searching kiss your head you bow,I care not for the lines that mark your brow,Nor for a vein that traces its bold lineUpon your hands now safely held in mine.You fear not; and you know most certainlyThat nothing dies that dares love loyally,And that the flame which nourishes us soFeeds upon ruin's self that it may grow.XIIThose clear welcoming flowers along the wall's extentWill be no longer waiting for us at our return;The silken waters that prolonged till they were spent,Under a pure sweet sky no longer reach and yearn.Of our melancholy plains the flying birds are shy;Over the marshes pale mists begin to crawl;Autumn, winter! Winter, autumn!—oh the cry!In the forest do you hear the dead wood fall?Our garden is no longer bridegroom of the light,Where once we saw the phlox in glorious surge and flare;Gladioli, in dust, once violent, upright,Lingeringly have lain them down to perish there.All is without strength or beauty, without fire,Fleeing and quailing and crumbling and passing sadly by;Oh, turn on me your eyes of light, for I desireThere to seek a comer of our early sky!It is there alone our light may still abide,The light that filled the garden once for you and me,Long ago, when our lily lifted its white prideAnd hollyhocks were an ascending ardency.XIIIWhen the diamond grains of fresh snowOn our threshold lie,I hear your steps that come and goIn the room near by.You move the clear mirror that besideThe window stood,And your bunch of keys strikes the drawerOf the chest of wood.I hear you stirring now the fire—The live coal flares;And hear you place by silent wallsThe silent chairs.I hear you wipe the dust from objectsAs you pass,And your ring resounds against the sideOf a vibrant glass.And happier am I still, this eve,With your presence dear—To feel you close, and not to see,But always hear.XIVIf fate has saved us from the banal sinsOf cowardly untruth and sad pretence,It is because we would have no constraintWhose yoke should bend our will with violence.Free and sunlit on your road you fared,Strewing with flowers of will your flowers of love;Pausing to sustain me when my headBowed to the weight of doubt or fear above.Always you were of gesture kind and frank,Knowing my heart for you forever burned;For if I loved another—could it be?—Always it was to your heart I returned.So pure your eyes were in their weeping thatMy truth to you became my only lord;I spoke to you then sweet and sacred words,Your sorrow and your pardon were your sword.I fell asleep at evening on your breast,Glad with return from distance false and bleakTo warmth of spring within us, glad withinYour open arms captivity to seek.XVNo, my soul has never tired of you!In the time of June you said to me:"If I thought, beloved, if I thoughtThat my love would ever weary you,With my sad thoughts and my lonely heart,No matter where, I should depart...."And sweetly sought the kiss I gave anew.And you said again:"One loses everything, life would repay;What though it be of gold,The chainThat in one harbour's ring can holdOur human ships to-day?"And sweetly wept for pain you could not say.And you saidAgain and yet again:"Let us separate, before we be untrue;Our life's too pure and highTo draw it out from fault to fault, and drainIt wearily away...." You sought to flyFrom me whose desperate hands strove to retain.No, my soul has never tired of you!XVIAh, we are happy still and proud to liveWhen the last ray, that's seen and then is lost,Brightens an instant the poor flowers of rimeEngraved upon our window by the frost.Life leaps within us and hope sweeps us on;And our garden, though it be now old,Though its paths be strewn with fallen boughs,Seems living, pure and dear and lit with gold.Something invades our blood, intrepid, bright,And urges us to incarnate againImmense, full summer in the fervid kissThat desperately we give each other then.XVIIAlas, must we accept the weight of yearsAnd find us nothing more than tranquil folkWho give each other infantile caressAt eve, when hearth is quick with flame and smoke?Our dear belongings, shall they see us thenCreeping from the hearth to wooden chest,To reach the window leaning on the wall,Sitting to give our tottering bodies rest?If such a day must then affirm our ruinAnd show the torpor brain or body fears,In spite of this fate we shall not complain,But keep within our breasts our captive tears.For we shall guard these eyes of ours to watchFor morn to follow night so pitiful,And see the sun of dawn burn on this life,Making of earth itself a miracle.XVIIIAll little facts, the things of no account,A letter, date, an anniversary,A word that's spoken as on days long past,Exalt, on these long evenings, you and me.We solemnise, we two, these simple thingsAnd count and recount all these gems of ours,So that what is left of our high selvesMay face valiantly these sombre hours.And we are jealous more than it is meetOf these poor, gentle, friendly memoriesWho seat themselves with us beside the fireWith winter flowers laid across thin knees.And the bread of happiness which onceWe did partake of, now they sit and eat;The bread on which our love has fed so longThat now it finds the very crumbs are sweet.XIXCome to our threshold now, oh snow,Strew thy pallid ash,Oh peaceful and slow falling snow;The linden in the garden hangs its branches lowAnd to the sky no flights of wood-larks go.Oh snow,Who warmest and dost shieldThe corn that is hardly sprungWith the moss, with the downStrewn on the spreading field!Silent snow, oh friendly oneTo houses sleeping in the morning calm,Cover our roof and brush our window-frames;Oh luminous snow, into our very soulTo find a way do thou not scorn,Snow that warmest still our last of dreamsLike the springing corn.XXWhen our clear garden lifted up its flow'rsThe self-accusations made by eachFor failure of our love, broke into speechIn passionate hours;And needed pardon offered and new peaceAnd explanations of our miseriesAnd tears that wet our sad and truthful eyesGave love increase.But in these months of dreary rainWhen all retires to earth again,When even light is fainTo find its war with darkness vain,No longer are our souls so strong and proudThat, rapturously, they should confess aloud.In lowered voice our sins we say,Though still in tenderness, not scorn;But 'tis at twilight now and not at morn.Sometimes we even count them, wrong by wrong,Like things that one counts overAnd puts away;And their folly or their hurt to coverWe argue long.XXIWith withered hands I touch your browAnd part your hair and kiss—(as the day diesAnd you are briefly sleeping by the hearth)Beneath long lashes hid, your fervent eyes.Oh the dear tenderness of sinking day!I think of the long years whose flight we saw,And suddenly your life in them appearsSo perfect that my love is filled with awe.And as in that time when we were betrothed,Ardour again is in me and has broughtDesire to kneel and touch your beating breastWith fingers that are chaste as is my thought.XXIIOur hearts once burned in joyous daysWith love as luminous as high,But age to-day has made us weakWith faults we dare deny.Thou dost not nourish us, oh will,By thine ardour in the strife,But soft benevolence aloneColours now our life.We near thy brink of setting, Love,And try to hide our frailty's painIn banal words and poor discourseOf wisdom slow and vain.How sad the future then would be,If when our days grow wintrierThere flame not forth the memoryOf the proud souls we were.XXIIIThis wrinkled winter when the ruined sunFounders 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 voiceThat 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 breathChangeless I reiterate the theme;Oh, think with what a passion, strong, supreme,Shall I pronounce it at the hour of death!XXIVPerhaps,On my last day,Perhaps,Across my window sill,The sunlight frail and stillWill 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 heightHave held you captive in the heart of them;Like field of wheat that surges in the mightOf 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!XXVClasped 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 strengthGrows leaden day by day with weight of feebleness!You wish it not that 1 become shadow and ruinLike all those who obey the gloomy night's behests,Though it be with laurel in their mournful handsAnd glory sleeping in their hollow breasts.Ah how time's harsh law is softened by your loveAnd how your lovely dream disconsolate tears would stem;For the first and only time you nurse with liesMy heart that finds excuse and gives you thanks for them.Which, however, knows all ardour is in vainAgainst what is and all that must be in the strife,And that perhaps there is profounder happinessTo end thus in your eyes my lovely human life.XXVIWhen you shall close these eyes of mine to light,Oh kiss them long—for all that love afireMay hope to give they shall have given youIn that last look of ultimate desire.Beneath the moveless glow of candle light,Oh lean to them your face so fain and braveThat on them be impressed this sight aloneThat they shall keep forever in the grave.And may I feel, before the tomb is mine,Upon the pure, white bed our hands that seekEach other once again, and near my headFeel for the last time repose your cheek;And know that I shall go away with heartBurning still for you so passionatelyThat even through the mute and stony earthThe dead themselves shall feel its ardency!