Young and kindly spring who clothes our garden
with beauty makes lucid our voices and words, and
steeps them in his limpidity.
The breeze and the lips of the leaves babble,
and slowly shed in us the syllables of their
brightness.
But the best in us turns away and flees material
words; a mute and mild and simple rapture, better
than all speech, moors our happiness to its true
heaven:
The rapture of your soul, kneeling in all
simplicity before mine, and of my soul, kneeling
in gentleness before yours.
X
Come with slow steps and sit near the gardenbed,
whose flowers of tranquil light are shut by
evening; let the great night filter through you:
we are too happy for our prayer to be disturbed
by its sea of dread.
Above, the pure crystal of the stars is lit up;
behold the firmament clearer and more translucent
than a blue pond or the stained-glass window
in an apse; and then behold heaven that gazes
through.
The thousand voices of the vast mystery speak
around you; the thousand laws of all nature are
in movement about you; the silver bows of the
invisible take your soul and its fervour for
target,
But you are not afraid, oh! simple heart, you
are not afraid, since your faith is that the
whole earth works in harmony with that love that
brought forth in you life and its mystery.
Clasp then your hands tranquilly, and adore
gently; a great counsel of purity floats like
a strange dawn beneath the midnights of the
firmament.