The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Sunlit 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 Sunlit HoursAuthor: Emile VerhaerenTranslator: Charles Royier MurphyRelease date: April 24, 2014 [eBook #45465]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marc D'Hooghe*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUNLIT 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 Sunlit HoursAuthor: Emile VerhaerenTranslator: Charles Royier MurphyRelease date: April 24, 2014 [eBook #45465]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marc D'Hooghe
Title: The Sunlit Hours
Author: Emile VerhaerenTranslator: Charles Royier Murphy
Author: Emile Verhaeren
Translator: Charles Royier Murphy
Release date: April 24, 2014 [eBook #45465]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Marc D'Hooghe
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUNLIT HOURS ***
I."O, the Splendour of this Joy of Ours"II."What Tho' We See It Break Before Us Into Flowers"III."This Carven Column Whereon Monsters Cling"IV."The Night, Unfolding, Banishes the Day"V."Remembering Thy Gracious Gift to Me"VI."At Times Thou Art the Spacious Light and Air"VII."Oh, Let It Knock Upon Our Door"VIII."I Have Given All My Heart to Thee"IX."The Youthful Spring with Wondrous Might"X."Come Out Into the Garden Fair"XI."How Swiftly is She Caught in Ecstasy"XII."At That Time When in Loneliness I stood"XIII."Of What Avail the Hectic Reasoning"XIV."Quietly, Like Stately Queens of Old"XV."To All Thy Smiles and Tears"XVI."I Bathe in Thy Two Eyes My Soul Entire"XVII."That Love Within Our Eyes May Be"XVIII."Mid-Summer Blooms Within Our Quiet Garden-Ways"XIX."May Thy Dear Eyes, Thy Clear Eyes, Be"XX."Tell Me, Oh My Tranquil Friend"XXI."In Those Hours When We Seem Shut Out"XXII."Oh, This Happiness"XXIII."Oh, Let Us Live Out Love with All Our Powers"XXIV."No Sooner Lip to Lip, Than We Are Fraught"XXV."That Nothing May Elude Our Close Embrace"XXVI."Although, the Autumn Eves"XXVII."The Gift of Body, When the Soul is Given"XXVIII."Was There Ever in Us One Caress"XXIX."This Fair Garden Flowering to Flame"XXX."If It Ever Be"
IO the splendour of this joy of ours,Woven of gold of the sun-lit hours!Here stands the house in soft repose,The garden and the orchard-close.Here is the bench beneath the apple treesWhere lazily the blanched springIts petals now doth fling.And here the luminous birds one seesSoaring, like presages of light,In the clear heaven of their flight.And here, as of caresses rained in showersFrom the lips of the higher blue,Two lovely tarns of softest hue,Bordered naively with involuntary flowers.O the splendour of our joy, for weLive doubly, in ourselves, and day's high ecstasy.IIWhat tho' we see it break before us into flowers,This garden where we pass the clear and silent hours?In our two hearts are spirit-flow'rs unfurled,Where blooms the fairest garden in the world.For as flow'rs we live and breatheWhen in laughter love breaks forth,And our sorrows sigh like treesIn the dark winds from the North;For we live as limpid lakes at calmThat mirror roses heavy with their balm,And rich vermilion lilies of the South,Each like a warm red mouth;For we utter all delightThat leaps in feasts and in the springWhen in vows our words take flight,Soar exultant on the wing.Oh! what flowers are in our hearts unfurl'dWithin the fairest garden in the world!IIIThis carven column whereon monsters clingAnd twist among themselves with ravening jaws,They seem to pant, and grip with mighty claws,And from each other anguished cries to wring—This was my soul before it knew thyself,Oh, thou the ever new, the ever old!Who earnest forth to me from deeps of selfArdour between thy hands and joy untold.I breathe a scent of faint familiar flow'rsWithin thy heart that sleep;And thirsty memory drinks deepOf kindred echoes from past years of ours;At the same instants in our childhood, tears,Unknowing, we have wept;We must have known like gladness and like fears,Like trysts with grief have kept;Long since was I bound to thee as thine ownBy One who came, inscrutable, unknown,Upon my life's adventurous battle field.Oh! had I searched His face, forgetting fear,I should have known thine eyes this many a year,That there between his eyelids were reveal'd!IVThe night, unfolding, banishes the day;The moon seems, in its long survey,To brood upon the sleeping silences;All the air is pure and clear,Pure and pale afar and near,And clear the waters in the friendly mead;What agony is in the slowAnd steady drip of water from a reed,That sounds and then is hushed below!But in my hands thy hands I hold;Thy steadfast eyes enfoldMine eyes; I seeThy peace like purest water undefiledBy cloudy fear, undimmed by hovering wraithOf doubt, and oh, I seeThe perfect faithThat rests within us like a sleeping child.VRemembering thy gracious gift to me,So simple, so profound,My wondering heart is lost in prayer to thee.How long it seemed beforeI, groping, foundAnd knocked at thy heart's door;And from how far I came at last to theeWhose hands were stretched in silentsearch for me.My heart was eaten by corroding rustThat preyed upon my strength,Defiled my trust;I was weary, I was old with long mistrust,I sickened of the roadway's empty length.When thy feet wandered into my life's wayThey brought a joy so exquisite to meThat, trembling and in tears, I can but stayTo worship silently.VIAt times thou art the spacious light and airOf all this tranquil morning garden, whereSinuous paths wind in the blue hazeLike swans upon the deep blue water-ways.At other times thou art the shivering windExultant, cool,Who passes, running fingers light and kindAlong the clear brow of the pool.When with thy two hands thou touchest me,I feel the brushing of cool leavesAgainst my cheek;When midday cleavesThe dimness, all the shadows secretlyMeditate the words that thou didst speak.So all the hours pass by some sweet graceOf thine, into my heart;And when at last the wan night comes apaceAnd rapt in sleep and still, apart,Thy spirit lies,Feel thro' thy closed eyelids how mine eyesDwell on thee with a love beyond compare,More humble and more clinging than a prayer.VIIOh, let it knock upon our door,That hand that taps with futile touch;We have our joy, the rest—what can it offer more?The rest with futile, listless touch?Let them pass our door,The wearied, mirthless joysWith their tinsel and their toys.Let laughter rise and sound and disappear;The crowd move on with million voices clear.The moment is so fair with lightIn this garden all about;The moment is so rare with new-born lightDeep within us and without!Ah, 'tis the part of wisdom, dear;No longer seek we those who goBy the long highway drear,With heavy feet and singing low.But stay we here, contented as of old,Though night itself strike out the sky above,Loving within us the idea we holdOf this most wondrous, steadfast thing, our love.VIIII have given all my heart to theeAs simply as a childGiving a dewy flower, fresh and wild;I pressed it to my lips and gave it thee—I broke the flower's stem with burning hand;Speak not, for words may hurt; but with thine eyesSpeak to my soul that it may understand.The flow'r that is my heart, my sacrifice,Tells thee quite simply that one mustConfide in virgin love, as children trustIn God who is so good and great and wise.Let the bold spirit revel in the hillsIn wilful dalliance and vanity,But let us worship in simplicityThe very truth that holds our hearts and wills;Nor can love be more fully saidThan when soul speaks to soul at night, and overheadThe innumerable silent stars like eyesBurn each on each,A speaking that surpasses speech,Amid the barkening silence of the skies.IXThe youthful spring with wondrous mightBursts out in all its clarityUpon our wistful words and sight,And bathes them deep in purity.The wind and the slender lips of the flowers,Trembling, scatter abroad in showersTheir syllables of light.But the soul of us will not be caughtWithin the chains that language wrought;One simple flight of spirit doth enshrine,Better than word or fitful thought,Our joy in its abiding place divine,—That heaven of thine wherein thy soulKneels gently down to mine,And that where wistfully my soulKneels humbly there to thine.XCome out into the garden fairWhere now the brooding eveHas closed the flowers with its tranquil light,And in thy soul let sink the peaceful night;For no longer may its gloom achieveTo trouble our deep prayer.Above, the crystal stars are shining forthWith light translucent and more pureThan ever came from out the frozen North;Beyond them all, the peaceful skies endure.The million voices of this mysteryMurmur around thee,The million laws of nature's realmAre stirring about thee.The silver tides from all the universe o'erwhelmThy heart, but thou hast naught of fear or strife,For thy soul knows—it is that love may be,The love that is the work of lifeAnd its mystery in thee.Take then this peace the skies have sent,And lay it to thy soul, since fear has gone,This peace that floats, like some strange dawn,Across the midnight of the firmament.XIHow swiftly is she caught in ecstasy,With her clear eyes of leaping flame;She, so sweet with clarity,Meek before life's sternest claim.This eve how sudden fervour rayedHer eyes! A simple word did entrance yieldTo the garden where she stood revealedBoth queen and serving maid!So meek herself, but for us two on fire;To her must kneel whoever doth desireThe harvest of that joy that rollsFrom out our two surchargèd souls.We heard exulting love within us seekThe quiet refuge of our hearts once more,And the living silence speakWords we dreamed not of before!XIIAt that time when in loneliness I stood,And desolation deep within me frozeMy life, you shone from out the multitude—A glowing window on a winter eveAcross the windy surface of the snows.Your piteous heart brought sweet reprieve,Caressingly, to me in need,Like breath of spring from off some warmèd mead.And faith did then commandThat frankness, tenderness and trothShould dwell with friendly hand in handWithin the wind-hushed stillness of us both.Since then, though summer melts the winter coldWithin, and under skies whose leaping fireDesigns with goldAll the winding pathways of our thought;Though flaming love itself is broughtTo far-flung blossoms of desire,That endlessly, to gain in might,Seek endless birth anew;Always I look to that dear lightWhose sweetness first I knew.XIIIOf what avail the hectic reasoningOf what we were and what we may attain?All doubt is dead within this close where springUnfolds within us far from life and pain.I reason not, nor do I seek to know,For naught can trouble that within whose scopeAre all of sweet impulse and sudden fervour's glow,And tranquil flight to sanctuaried hope.Before I knew, I felt thy clarity;And 'tis my joy aboveAll else to fill my heart with loveNor question why thy voice so calls to me.Come, let our hearts be true—the day insureTo us the tenderness without the strife,And let them say that lifeWas never made to reach a love so pure.XIVQuietly, like stately queens of oldWho, step by languid step, descend the stairs of goldIn fairy tales, thou movest in my dream;Names I give thee, such as must beseemAll beauty and all radiance; names that soothe,Resounding silken-smooth,Sounds that wind and waver, glide and glance,Weaving my poems, as in subtle dance.Ah, but how soon I leave this playWhen I behold thy wistful way,Thine unadorned, profoundly wistful way;Thy forehead unafraid and calmer than the day,Thy peaceful child-like hands laid open on thy knees,Thy breathing bosom and the dreamful easeThat on thy deep and limpid spirit lies.How useless and how little in the sightOf this are all things—all things, save the naked lightThat wells up from thy heart and gathers in thine eyes.XVTo all thy smiles and tearsMy sweetest thoughts I give,Those from a brimming heart,And those that liveToo deep for language to impart.To all thy smiles and tears,And to thy soul, my soul,With all its smiles and tears,And its caress.See thou, how dawn has blanched all the earth,The shades of gloom seem put to flight,To vanish comfortless;The lonely lakes have caught the morning's light,The wet flow'rs glisten and are filled with mirth,And the golden woods have swept away the night.Oh, that I might at lastEnter upon the joyous way,Oh, that I might at last,With a victor's joy and a victor's pride,And thou by my side—Oh, that I might at lastEnter with thee into love's full day!XVII bathe in thy two eyes my soul entire,As tho' in purest water it were laid,And in their sanctities I quench its fireThat tempered and more keen it may be made.Oh, to join in utter purity,As two stain'd windows, smitten by the sun,Mingle their lights in separate clarityAnd melt to one!I am sometimes impatient of my lotAs being one who has not and can notAttain the perfectness he would espouse;My heart beats on the bars that are its vows—My heart whose evil blossoms push their wayBetween the rocks of blind brutalityAnd flaunt shamefacedlyTheir swarthy flow'rs in sinister array.My heart so false—so true—as change the years,My heart of very contradiction made—Exaggerating heart where merge and shadeImmensities of joy and startl'd fears.XVIIThat love within our eyes may beUttered with all clarity;Oh, let us cleanse our looks from thoseThat choseThe way of life's brutality.The dawn has flowered in red and gold,Strange softened lightAnd mist;It seems as though some tender down of goldAnd silver through the twilight kissed,With dim caresses, all our garden-ways;Our mysterious lake displaysIts trembling sheen of golden light;Beneath the trees swoon birds in emerald flight;And dawn, from off the gloomy plain, the hillside steep,Doth sweepThe last grey ashes of unwilling night.XVIIIMid-summer blooms within our quiet garden-ways;A golden peacock down the dusky alley strays;Gay flower petals strew—Pearl, emerald and blue—The curving slopes of fragrant summer grass;The pools are clear as glassBetween the white cups of the lily-flowers;The currants are like jewelled fairy-bowers;A dazzling insect worries the heart of a rose,Where a delicate fern a filmy shadow throws,And airy as bubbles the thousands of beesOver the young grape-clusters swarm as they please.The air is pearly, iridescent, pure;These profound and radiant noons mature,Unfolding even as odorous roses of clear light;Familiar roads to distances inviteLike slow and graceful gestures, one by oneBound for the pearly-hued horizon and the sun.Surely the summer clothes, with all her arts,No other garden with such grace and power;And 'tis the poignant joy close-folded in our heartsThat cries its life aloud from every flaming flower.XIXMay thy dear eyes, thy clear eyes, beTo me on earthThe pledges of felicity.And may our kindled souls, in showers,Clothe with gold each flaming thought of ours.That my two hands against thy heart ne'er ceaseTo be to thee on earthThe emblem of all peace.And may we live as two lost prayers implore,One to the other yearning evermore.May our kisses be, on lips in strife,To us on earthThe symbols of our life.XXTell me, oh my tranquil friend,How absence of a day untunedAnd brought our song of love to end,And wakened every sleeping wound.I go to meet all those that comeFrom out that land of mysteryWhere thou did'st go toward the red sun-rise;Beneath a tree I sit, and cold and dumb,Down the long road spy eagerly;And long I look with fervour on the eyesStill lustrous with the sight of thee;I'd kiss those fingers, for thy touch less wearisome;I'd utter words whose meaning none perceive;But, dumb, I listen, hear their footfalls reachThe shadows where the aged eveHolds the black night in leash.XXIIn those hours when we seem shut outFrom all that is not part of us,What cleansing flood is it, so nebulous,That bathes and circles our two hearts about?Joining our hands, without a prayer,Arm to arm, without a cry,Seeking we know not what nor where,Something far off, more pure than thou or I—Thou fervent soul, oh sayHow does one live in this yearned-for day?In those high hours how deep doth grow our willIn front of life's supremacies!What need of other heavens still,Wherein with newer gods to cope!What anguish and what ecstasies,And what unflinching hopeTo be, one day,Through death itself, the preyOf these far silent agonies!XXIIOh, this happiness,Sometimes so rare, so frail,It brings us near distress!In vain we strive, as our hearts fail,To make for us a screening tentWith all thy wondrous hairTo shelter us from care—Yet deep within does anguish still ferment.But love, a kneeling angel prays,Asking alone for this,That Fate may give to others equal daysOf tenderness and bliss.And on those stormy days when evenings shareWith highest heaven all their cruel despair,We seek forgiveness as the night unrolls—Forgiveness for the sweetness in our souls.XXIIIOh, let us live out love with all our powers,Aspire audaciously in thoughts most high,That they may interweave in harmonyIn the supremest ecstasy of ours.Because within our twined soulsSomething more pure than aught in us,More sacred, mightier, unrolls—Join we our hands, and let us seek it thus.What matters it that naught but tears,Our halting speech availFor that whose puissant beauty, as it nears,Doth make our two hearts quail?Oh, may we thus forever meetLove's stern, ensweetened pains,Kneeling, by fervour overcome,Before the sudden god within that reigns,So violent and so burning sweet,Our very souls succumb.XXIVNo sooner lip to lip, than we are fraughtWith sun-lit fervour that o'erpowers,As though two gods within us soughtA god-like union in these souls of ours;Ah, how we feel divinity is near—Our hearts so freshened by their primal mightOf light,That in their clarity the universe shines clear.Ah, joy alone, the ferment of the earth,Doth bring to life and stirTo far, illimitable birth;As there above, across the barsOf heaven, where voyage veils of gossamer,Are born the myriad-flowering stars.How for us is design of life profound!All seems as pure as leaping fire—Our words so filled with fair desireWe say them o'er to hear them ceaseless sound.We are the ones, victorious and sublime,Who seek eternity,With humble pride;—our love shall ever beFree from the bonds of time.XXVThat nothing may elude our close embrace,This depth of holy love,That through the body love be clear with grace,I seek with thee the garden of our love.Thy breast is there, an offering,Thy hands reach out to me,Naive and tender whisperingIs breathed and heard by thee.The shadows from the branches nowO'er thy throat and visage pass,Thy hair has spread its blossoms lowIn garlands, on the grass.All blue and silver broods the night,A silent, sleeping bed, this hour—Sweet night! whose breezes one by one deflowerThe lilies trembling in the low moon's light.XXVIAlthough, these Autumn eves,So wistfully,Between the trees, all down the pathsFall the listless yellow leavesBetween the trees and down the paths,Although while Autumn grieves,The night-wind reaps a harvest pale,So wistfully,Where the late-blown roses failLoosing petals wan in showers—Ah, let no petal from our loveFall and wither with the flowers.But let us both lean close aboveThe smouldering hearth of memory—But let us tend and feed the glowing coalsAnd reach our hands and warm our soulsAgainst the winter-cold and misery,Against the hour that tolls the death of all desire,Against our very selves, our stricken passion—Oh, lean with me above the blessed fireThat Memory's hands have kindled in compassion.And if the skies be drownedWhile passionate Autumn roams the world and rakesThe woods and the wild lakes,No echo of the madness shall be foundIn that safe garden, inmost and supreme,here in the breathing stillness soundThe quiet footfalls of our Dream.XXVIIThe gift of body, when the soul is given,Is naught but harmonyOf two tendernesses drivenOne to the other, fervidly.Glory in thyself thou findest sweet.So fair in thy fresh purity,Only to offer meThe wondrous gift complete.I come to thee, and knowExaltation in this gift of thine;Always the truer, the more pure I growSince thy dear body gave itself to mine.Love! oh, may it overflowOur hearts and be the reason in our lives,Whose maddest happiness is one that strivesToward the madness of a trust divine.XXVIIIWas there ever in us one caress,One joyous laugh, or tendernessWe dared not strew before us on our way?Or ever prayer in silence heard,Whose dim, unuttered wordWe sought to stay?A single yearning of compassion.A quiet vow or one of passionWe sought to slay?So, loving thus,Our hearts, like two apostles, wentSeeking the lowly ones with timid brow,Who, feeling then so bound to us,Proclaimed on high love's ravishment,As a flowery people loves the boughThat holds them bathed in the sun's warm ray;Our souls, grown greater still by this re-birth,Began to glory those who feel love's sway,Increasing love by love's own might,To cherish thus divinely the whole earthThat seemed reflected in our own souls' light.XXIXThis fair garden flowering to flame,That seems the wondrous beauty to proclaimOf that clear garden whereunto we cleave,Is crystallised in frosted gold this eve.A great white silence drops athwart the sky,Out there where gleams a marble hue,Whither, one by one, the tall trees stride,Each with its shadow, long and blueAnd lonely, by its side.No stir of wind; but soundlesslyThe blanched veils of cold aloneUnfold themselves mysteriouslyOn the marshes' silver or the roads' white stone.The stars are lustrous with desire;Like furbished steel the rimeWithin the cold, translucid air.From some infinity sublime,Across the paleness of a waning moon,Falls shower on shower of fire—Star-dust that thereSinks in a scintillating swoon.It is the hour divine, when wistfullyA million eyes look down upon the earth—Upon the hazards of our human birth—From out immutable eternity.XXXIf it ever beThat thou and I should bringOne to the other sufferingOf loss and sorrow; or if fate decreeThat weariness of banal joys unstringThe golden bow within us of desire;If thought's clear crystal vase entireMust in our spirits fall and break below;If, spite of all, I lie at last supine,Vanquish'd for not having been enoughThe prey of great, divine,Utter nobility—Oh! let us be like maddened fools that climb the heightBeneath the ruin'd sky; and let us closer, closer cling,And in one monstrous flight,With sun-drenched souls, cleave the on-rushing night!