Dry the brows of your desires; they are weak with sweat. Go firstly to those on the point of swooning. They have the air of people celebrating a wedding in a dungeon, Or of people entering, at mid-day, a long lamp-lit avenue underground; In festival procession they are passing Thro' a landscape like an orphaned childhood. Go now to those about to die: They move like virgins who have wandered far In the sun, on a day of fast; They are pale as patients who placidly listen to the rain in the gardens of the hospital; They have the look of survivors, breaking their fast on a battle-field; They are like prisoners who know that all their gaolers are bathing in the river, And who hear men mowing the grass in the garden of the prison. AQUARIUM Now my desires no more, alas, Summon my soul to my eyelids' brink, For with its prayers that ebb and pass It too must sink, To lie in the depth of my closed eyes; Only the flowers of its weary breath Like icy blooms to the surface rise, Lilies of death. Its lips are sealed; in the depths of woe, And a world away, in the far-off gloom, They sing of azure stems that grow A mystic bloom. But lo, its fingers--I have grown Pallid beholding them, I who perceive Them trace the marks its poor unblown Lost lilies leave. I know it must die, for its hour is o'er: Folding its impotent hands at last, Hands too weary to pluck any more The flowers of the past! THE BURNING-GLASS I watch the hours of long ago: Their blue and secret depths I set Under the burning-glass, Regret, And watch a happier flora blow. Hold up the glass o'er my desires! Behold them through my soul, a glass At memory's touch the withered grass Breaks forth into devouring fires. Now above my thoughts I hold The azure crystal, in whose heart Suddenly unfolding start The leaves of agonies borne of old, Until those nights remote I see Even to memory dead so long That their sullen tears do wrong To the green soul of hopes to be. REFLECTIONS Under the brimming tide of dreams O, my soul is full of fear! In my heart the moon is clear; Deep it lies in the tide of dreams. Under the listless reeds asleep, Only the deep reflection shows Of palm, of lily and of rose, Weeping yet in the waters deep; And the flowers, late and soon, Fall upon the mirrored sky, To sink and sink eternally Thro' dreamy waters and the moon. VISIONS All the tears that I have shed, All my kisses, lo, they pass Thro' my mind as in a glass: All my kisses whose joy is dead.