Contemporary Belgian Poetry Part 8

To live! is when the hot blood races And swells the breast, And makes the words leap out in ready throng!

Life is to be alone and strong, And master of one's fate!

Ye floods of purple pour in state, Ripen the morn, and roll men's blood along!

The wise Have never lived and do not know what joys Are in mad battle, carnage and great noise, When courage with courage vies.

The wise Are they who when the cautious eve creeps on to night Exile themselves from the festival of light Weeping its tears of proud gold on the river, O'er the lamp-lit book to s.h.i.+ver.

To live Is better, and to ring one's heel On the floor of a palace won by crimsoned steel, Or underneath a charger's hoofs to tread The gra.s.s of roads down-trodden by the fugitive Foe who has dyed them red.

But the young hour gay with sun, The tiring hour that weeps, Hour after hour creeps Hours after hours run Along the river banks.

Now cooler are noon's beams, O dreams reposed with languor and with ease, The waters creep, O calm dreams!

Upon the moss in shade of elms and alder-trees The peaceful fishers sleep; A long thread swims upon the dying stream.

In the foliage never a s.h.i.+ver, The sun darts never a beam, All is dumb.

The earth around, the meadows and the river, And the air with suns.h.i.+ne numb, And the forest with its leafy houses, Everywhere all action drowses, And the earth hesitates with indecision, A smoker's vague vision.

The only wisdom is to live The hours of the river, sleeping on its slopes.

Why should we madly follow fugitive Inclement pride and crumbling hopes Along the precipices of the heavy night, That swallows up all ruined light?

No! to live Is to follow all the river's turnings, Sailing one's life with dreams and yearnings, With prow set to the Orient of oblivion, To conquer all the sea and all the isles that smile, That no discoverer will ever set foot on Save he who kept desire a virgin, all the while, O dream!

The young hour gay with sun, The tiring hour that weeps, Hour after hour creeps, Hours after hours run, Along the river banks.

AWAKE

Awake!

It is a joy among hibernal hours To plunge into the pane the h.o.a.r-frost flowers; Behold: the petals glittering on the pane Open their wings that dream would follow fain.

Awake, and revel in the dawn's pure joys, And smile upon the time the sun becalms: In the bright garden, save in dream, no noise But a long imagined s.h.i.+vering, O palms!

Come, and behold my love, as ever of old, Make the vast silence flower lit by thy glance, Glad with its peaceful pinions to enfold Our pa.s.sion soothed with rich remembrance.

LIFE IS CALM.

Life is calm, Even as this evening of sweet summer, now The bird is silent on the bough, That bends above the river, Whose reeds no longer quiver; And the pacific night and wise Sleeps without a shudder under cloudless skies.

Life is calm!

It is your face, O sister dear, At happiness scarce smiling here, Life is your face, dear sister, So calm; As life is and your happiness, Your face is cloudless, calm, and pa.s.sionless.

Even the river hushes Between its banks, among its rushes; One by one fall flowers; Silent, gentle eventide, Life is calm where waters glide; By waters where the happiness that lies Smiling, sister, in the tender flas.h.i.+ng of your eyes, Is wondering at the waters, and the evenings, and the hours.

FRONTISPIECE.

The gems that ivories clip, And chrysoberyls puerile, Mingling their gleams, beguile The dole of the black tulip;

The fountain weeps in the old Garden o'er flowers sad, Which by the dawn are clad In amethyst and in gold:

In the boxwood shadow lingers, In sentimental _fetes,_ The _chevalier_, and awaits The princess whose pale fingers Are flowers that bring relief Unto her languorous grief.

INVITATION.

The ruby my vow desires For your beauty smiling kind Is surely incarnadined By a limpid mirror's fires.

Ice with the flame interchanges, And your eyes hard with dignity Bruise the sobbed longing to be A bauble your hand arranges.

But remember the waters yonder Cradle the vessels that wander To the isle in the bright future hidden,

And come while the winter is dark, To sail our adventurous bark Madly o'er oceans forbidden.

TO THE POLE.

Through fogs impa.s.sible that freeze the soul, And under torpor-laden skies of gray, If none can ever open out a way To the icy horror of the reachless Pole,

Yet those who died or shall die striving thither, In faith of victory and glory of dream, Have known the rapturous pride of conquest gleam, Brief flower of hope that never grief shall wither.

But thou, long cheated by the immutable thirst Of being loved, hast too, too well rehea.r.s.ed The vanity of combats sterile all,

And dost with bitter, pitiless irony see Those who go following ghosts that ever flee Sink in the chasm where thyself didst fall.

PAUL GeRARDY.

1870--.

SHE.

She whom my heart in dream already loves Will under childlike curls have great blue eyes; Her voice will be as sweet as that of doves, Her skin a faint rose like a dream that dies.

So slender she will be among earth's daughters, That you would think of lilies under gla.s.s, Of a fountain weeping to the sky its waters, Or the moon's beam quivering on dewy gra.s.s.

And, from her deep heart to her lips arising, Guessing what seeds of songs are in me sown, She will be ever humming them, disguising My soul with the golden gamut of her own.

And never a bitter word will come from her; Her eyes will always call to my caress, Chaste as the eyes of my own mother were, Melting with my own mother's tenderness.