When the diamond grains of fresh snow On our threshold lie, I hear your steps that come and go In the room near by. You move the clear mirror that beside The window stood, And your bunch of keys strikes the drawer Of the chest of wood. I hear you stirring now the fire-- The live coal flares; And hear you place by silent walls The silent chairs. I hear you wipe the dust from objects As you pass, And your ring resounds against the side Of 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. XIV If fate has saved us from the banal sins Of cowardly untruth and sad pretence, It is because we would have no constraint Whose 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 head Bowed 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 that My 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 bleak To warmth of spring within us, glad within Your open arms captivity to seek. XV No, my soul has never tired of you! In the time of June you said to me: "If I thought, beloved, if I thought That 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 chain That in one harbour's ring can hold Our human ships to-day?" And sweetly wept for pain you could not say. And you said Again and yet again: "Let us separate, before we be untrue; Our life's too pure and high To draw it out from fault to fault, and drain It wearily away...." You sought to fly From me whose desperate hands strove to retain. No, my soul has never tired of you! XVI Ah, we are happy still and proud to live When the last ray, that's seen and then is lost, Brightens an instant the poor flowers of rime Engraved 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.