Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?
What shall be said between us here | |
Among the downs, between the trees, | |
In fields that knew our feet last year, | |
In sight of quiet sands and seas, | |
This year, Félise? | |
Who knows what word were best to say? | |
For last year’s leaves lie dead and red | |
On this sweet day, in this green May, | |
And barren corn makes bitter bread. | |
10 | What shall be said? |
Here as last year the fields begin, | |
A fire of flowers and glowing grass; | |
The old fields we laughed and lingered in, | |
Seeing each our souls in last year’s glass, | |
Félise, alas! | |
Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep, | |
Not we, though this be as it is? | |
For love awake or love asleep | |
Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss, | |
20 | A song like this. |
I that have slept awake, and you | |
Sleep, who last year were well awake. | |
Though love do all that love can do, | |
My heart will never ache or break | |
For your heart’s sake. | |
The great sea, faultless as a flower, | |
Throbs, trembling under beam and breeze, | |
And laughs with love of the amorous hour. | |
I found you fairer once, Félise, | |
30 | Than flowers or seas. |
We played at bondsman and at queen; | |
But as the days change men change too; | |
I find the grey sea’s notes of green, | |
The green sea’s fervent flakes of blue, | |
More fair than you. | |
Your beauty is not over fair | |
Now in mine eyes, who am grown up wise. | |
The smell of flowers in all your hair | |
Allures not now; no sigh replies | |
40 | If your heart sighs. |
But you sigh seldom, you sleep sound, | |
You find love’s new name good enough. | |
Less sweet I find it than I found | |
The sweetest name that ever love | |
Grew weary of. | |
My snake with bright bland eyes, my snake | |
Grown tame and glad to be caressed, | |
With lips athirst for mine to slake | |
Their tender fever! who had guessed | |
50 | You loved me best? |
I had died for this last year, to know | |
You loved me. Who shall turn on fate? | |
I care not if love come or go | |
Now, though your love seek mine for mate. | |
It is too late. | |
The dust of many strange desires | |
Lies deep between us; in our eyes | |
Dead smoke of perishable fires | |
Flickers, a fume in air and skies, | |
60 | A steam of sighs. |
You loved me and you loved me not; | |
A little, much, and overmuch. | |
Will you forget as I forgot? | |
Let all dead things lie dead; none such | |
Are soft to touch. | |
I love you and I do not love, | |
Too much, a little, not at all; | |
Too much, and never yet enough. | |
Birds quick to fledge and fly at call | |
70 | Are quick to fall. |
And these love longer now than men, | |
And larger loves than ours are these. | |
No diver brings up love again | |
Dropped once, my beautiful Félise, | |
In such cold seas. | |
Gone deeper than all plummets sound, | |
Where in the dim green dayless day | |
The life of such dead things lies bound | |
As the sea feeds on, wreck and stray | |
80 | And castaway. |
Can I forget? yea, that can I, | |
And that can all men; so will you, | |
Alive, or later, when you die. | |
Ah, but the love you plead was true? | |
Was mine not too? | |
I loved you for that name of yours | |
Long ere we met, and long enough. | |
Now that one thing of all endures – | |
The sweetest name that ever love | |
90 | Waxed weary of. |
Like colours in the sea, like flowers, | |
Like a cat’s splendid circled eyes | |
That wax and wane with love for hours, | |
Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies, | |
And soft like sighs – | |
And all these only like your name, | |
And your name full of all of these. | |
I say it, and it sounds the same – | |
Save that I say it now at ease, | |
100 | Your name, Félise. |
I said ‘she must be swift and white, | |
And subtly warm, and half perverse, | |
And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite, | |
And like a snake’s love lithe and fierce.’ | |
Men have guessed worse. | |
What was the song I made of you | |
Here where the grass forgets our feet | |
As afternoon forgets the dew? | |
Ah that such sweet things should be fleet, | |
110 | Such fleet things sweet! |
As afternoon forgets the dew, | |
As time in time forgets all men, | |
As our old place forgets us two, | |
Who might have turned to one thing then, | |
But not again. | |
O lips that mine have grown into | |
Like April’s kissing May, | |
O fervent eyelids letting through | |
Those eyes the greenest of things blue, | |
120 | The bluest of things grey, |
If you were I and I were you, | |
How could I love you, say? | |
How could the roseleaf love the rue, | |
The day love nightfall and her dew, | |
Though night may love the day? | |
You loved it may be more than I; | |
We know not; love is hard to seize, | |
And all things are not good to try; | |
And lifelong loves the worst of these | |
130 | For us, Félise. |
Ah, take the season and have done, | |
Love well the hour and let it go: | |
Two souls may sleep and wake up one, | |
Or dream they wake and find it so, | |
And then – you know. | |
Kiss me once hard as though a flame | |
Lay on my lips and made them fire; | |
The same lips now, and not the same; | |
What breath shall fill and re-inspire | |
140 | A dead desire? |
The old song sounds hollower in mine ear | |
Than thin keen sounds of dead men’s speech – | |
A noise one hears and would not hear; | |
Too strong to die, too weak to reach | |
From wave to beach. | |
We stand on either side the sea, | |
Stretch hands, blow kisses, laugh and lean | |
I toward you, you toward me; | |
But what hears either save the keen | |
150 | Grey sea between? |
A year divides us, love from love, | |
Though you love now, though I loved then. | |
The gulf is strait, but deep enough; | |
Who shall recross, who among men | |
Shall cross again? | |
Love was a jest last year, you said, | |
And what lives surely, surely dies. | |
Even so; but now that love is dead, | |
Shall love rekindle from wet eyes, | |
160 | From subtle sighs? |
For many loves are good to see; | |
Mutable loves, and loves perverse; | |
But there is nothing, nor shall be, | |
So sweet, so wicked, but my verse | |
Can dream of worse. | |
For we that sing and you that love | |
Know that which man may, only we. | |
The rest live under us; above, | |
Live the great gods in heaven, and see | |
170 | What things shall be. |
So this thing is and must be so; | |
For man dies, and love also dies. | |
Though yet love’s ghost moves to and fro | |
The sea-green mirrors of your eyes, | |
And laughs, and lies. | |
Eyes coloured like a water-flower, | |
And deeper than the green sea’s glass; | |
Eyes that remember one sweet hour – | |
In vain, we swore it should not pass; | |
180 | In vain, alas! |
Ah my Félise, if love or sin, | |
If shame or fear could hold it fast, | |
Should we not hold it? Love wears thin, | |
And they laugh well who laugh the last. | |
Is it not past? | |
The gods, the gods are stronger; time | |
Falls down before them, all men’s knees | |
Bow, all men’s prayers and sorrows climb | |
Like incense towards them; yea, for these | |
190 | Are gods, Félise. |
Immortal are they, clothed with powers, | |
Not to be comforted at all; | |
Lords over all the fruitless hours; | |
Too great to appease, too high to appal, | |
Too far to call. | |
For none shall move the most high gods, | |
Who are most sad, being cruel; none | |
Shall break or take away the rods | |
Wherewith they scourge us, not as one | |
200 | That smites a son. |
By many a name of many a creed | |
We have called upon them, since the sands | |
Fell through time’s hour-glass first, a seed | |
Of life; and out of many lands | |
Have we stretched hands. | |
When have they heard us? who hath known | |
Their faces, climbed unto their feet, | |
Felt them and found them? Laugh or groan, | |
Doth heaven remurmur and repeat | |
210 | Sad sounds or sweet? |
Do the stars answer? in the night | |
Have ye found comfort? or by day | |
Have ye seen gods? What hope, what light, | |
Falls from the farthest starriest way | |
On you that pray? | |
Are the skies wet because we weep, | |
Or fair because of any mirth? | |
Cry out; they are gods; perchance they sleep; | |
Cry; thou shalt know what prayers are worth, | |
220 | Thou dust and earth. |
O earth, thou art fair; O dust, thou art great; | |
O laughing lips and lips that mourn, | |
Pray, till ye feel the exceeding weight | |
Of God’s intolerable scorn, | |
Not to be borne. | |
Behold, there is no grief like this; | |
The barren blossom of thy prayer, | |
Thou shalt find out how sweet it is. | |
O fools and blind, what seek ye there, | |
230 | High up in the air? |
Ye must have gods, the friends of men, | |
Merciful gods, compassionate, | |
And these shall answer you again. | |
Will ye beat always at the gate, | |
Ye fools of fate? | |
Ye fools and blind; for this is sure, | |
That all ye shall not live, but die. | |
Lo, what thing have ye found endure? | |
Or what thing have ye found on high | |
240 | Past the blind sky? |
The ghosts of words and dusty dreams, | |
Old memories, faiths infirm and dead. | |
Ye fools; for which among you deems | |
His prayer can alter green to red | |
Or stones to bread? | |
Why should ye bear with hopes and fears | |
Till all these things be drawn in one, | |
The sound of iron-footed years, | |
And all the oppression that is done | |
250 | Under the sun? |
Ye might end surely, surely pass | |
Out of the multitude of things, | |
Under the dust, beneath the grass, | |
Deep in dim death, where no thought stings, | |
No record clings. | |
No memory more of love or hate, | |
No trouble, nothing that aspires, | |
No sleepless labour thwarting fate, | |
And thwarted; where no travail tires, | |
260 | Where no faith fires. |
All passes, nought that has been is, | |
Things good and evil have one end. | |
Can anything be otherwise | |
Though all men swear all things would mend | |
With God to friend? | |
Can ye beat off one wave with prayer, | |
Can ye move mountains? bid the flower | |
Take flight and turn to a bird in the air? | |
Can ye hold fast for shine or shower | |
270 | One wingless hour? |
Ah sweet, and we too, can we bring | |
One sigh back, bid one smile revive? | |
Can God restore one ruined thing, | |
Or he who slays our souls alive | |
Make dead things thrive? | |
Two gifts perforce he has given us yet, | |
Though sad things stay and glad things fly; | |
Two gifts he has given us, to forget | |
All glad and sad things that go by, | |
280 | And then to die. |
We know not whether death be good, | |
But life at least it will not be: | |
Men will stand saddening as we stood, | |
Watch the same fields and skies as we | |
And the same sea. | |
Let this be said between us here, | |
One love grows green when one turns grey; | |
This year knows nothing of last year; | |
To-morrow has no more to say | |
290 | To yesterday. |
Live and let live, as I will do, | |
Love and let love, and so will I. | |
But, sweet, for me no more with you: | |
Not while I live, not though I die. | |
Goodnight, goodbye. |