I hear a night bird call its mate?... a hound Out on the farm bark at some peasant maid Too tired with harvesting to feel afraid. ... Loosed, and now tied, scenting the sunny air, All day she combed and tossed the fields' dim hair, As some mute servant tending a fair queen She works in beauty neither felt nor seen, While I have nature, all the whole earth over, For company. Yet anxious as a lover Prisoned in sentiment, I watch and start. Is it then just for you I live apart? The moon, as milk caught in a pail, now flows Over its rim, whit'ning the dark that glows-- I saw your absence less by day, and less This summers brilliant, living emptiness. II Another day in flowered light comes through The curtains of the room that waits for you. I leave it so, to its Byronian gloom: In vain red roses at your casements bloom. The lyre-shaped clock that once struck hours of gold, Has stopped, the prisoned summer air turns cold. The mirrors that no longer see you pass, Seem frames without their pictures, lengths of glass Bored to reflect a house without expression. Only my mind can image the procession Of past realities, that flitter by Invisible to all. These guides and I Live a repeated life in which we follow Through the deserted rooms, through tree-topped hollow Roads, the joyful phantoms gone before. The rhododendrons hedge-like corridor, Must lead you, now and ever, back to me! As often as our eyes have sought the sea, I rest mine on this woodland resting-place. Ah when again, the blossom of your face? And, many times to aid the incantation, Seeking some proof to fix my meditation, I pause where the soft earth still bears the seals Of your once-waiting and impatient heels! And stoop, to find again the marks I found, The little marks your feet leave on the ground! A PILGRIMAGE. Is that your window with the moving shade In pilgrimage I've come so far to see? --The air may enter, you are not afraid Of the «great air» that plays invisibly About your neck, moving your opened hair (That busy shadow is perhaps your maid?) While I must wait, as near as I may be, Upon the sands, wishing that I were made Like Ariel to skip accross the sea Bringing you kisses, in small waves that bear The prostrate happy sun-flushed evening there, And all unseen cover you every where: To rise up with the tide and fall on you With lips that moisten, cling, and sting like spray-- To want you, and so wanting turn away? Or beat my way into that prisoned hue: Now that your window is a golden square Cut in the darkness? Must I homeward fare With flapping cape against the wind to fight, Or like a sea-gull wing towards your light? _D'une plage lointaine._ BACKWARD