Tell me, my simple and tranquil sweetheart, tell
me how much an absence, even of a day, saddens
and stirs up love, and reawakens it in all its
sleeping scalds?
I go to meet those who are returning from the
wondrous distances to which at dawn you went; I
sit beneath a tree at a bend of the path, and, on
the road, watching their coming, I gaze and gaze
earnestly at their eyes still bright with having
seen you.
And I would kiss their fingers that have touched
you, and cry out to them words they would not
understand; and I listen a long while to the
rhythm of their steps towards the shadow where
the old evenings hold night prone.