WHAT USE IS SPEECH?

What use is speech, what use is it to say

Words that without an echo die away,

And only leave vain sadness after?

All a forest of shadow rings with laughter,

If thou but move thy hand to grasp at life!

My love, the path on which we laugh with life

Pales in a doubt befogged with roads that leads not thorough;

The night is triumphing with stars, towards to-morrow!

In the night, thou sayest, shadowy terrors fall.

Be undeceived, there is no night:

There is only multiform, enormous light,

And the stars are there, for thee to be drunk withal!

Contemporary Belgian Poetry Selected and Translated by Jethro Bithell · 第 171 / 232 题