Lo, the diver, forever within his bell!
And a whole sea of glass, a sea eternally warm!
A whole motionless world, a world of slow
green rhythms!
So many curious creatures beyond those walls
of glass,
And any contact eternally prohibited!
And yet there is so much life in those bright
waters yonder!
Look! The shadows of great sailing-ships--
they glide over the flowers, the dahlias of
the submarine forest!
And I stand for a moment in the shadow of
whales that are voyaging to the Pole!
And at this very moment, I doubt not, my
fellow-men in the harbour
Are discharging the vessels that sail hither
laden with ice:
A glacier was there, in the midst of the July meadows!
And men are swimming and floating in the
green waters of the creek,
And at noon they enter shadowy caverns...
And the breezes of ocean are fanning the roofs
and balconies.
Lo, the flaming tongues of the Gulf-Stream!
Take heed lest their kisses touch the walls of
lassitude!
They have ceased to lay ice on the brows of
the fevered,
And the patients have lit a bonfire
And are casting great handfuls of green lilies
into the flames!
Lean your brows upon the cooler panes,
While waiting for the moonlight to enter the
bell from above,
And close your eyes tightly, to the forest of colour,
The pendulous blues and albuminous violets,
And close your ears to the suggestions of the
tepid water.
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.