GEORGES RENCY.
1875—.
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!
THE SOURCE.
Our feet kiss where the source is glistening
In the glad gloaming softening the trees.
Its waters murmur mysteries to the breeze,
And we in ravishment are listening.
The leaves are paling in the twilight chill:
A mystic something in the air is swimming;
Our eyes with happy tears are over-brimming;
And now the source grows timid, and is still.
The shadow makes the world so fair and frail;
Wouldst thou not, like a banner on the gale,
Be fain to shake thy heart out tenderly?—
But no, say nothing: silence is a veil
For fervent thoughts that utterance only mars.
Let us sit hand in hand, and converse be
Without a word under the peace of stars.
THE FLESH.
O carnal love, life's laughter! Under these
Free Eden skies and on these blossomed leas,
Thy kiss is on these budding lips of ours.
The high grass is all gold, the drunken flowers
Voluptuously languish, every one,
Feverish as the earth is with the sun.
My heart leaps like a beast of light, and rears
And madly o'er the royal road careers,
Where my desires' processional altars are.
Your flesh is quivering and to mine replies,
Dearest, and glassed within your great pale eyes
Is Heaven immensely blue and deep and far.
Kiss me! The hour is sweet, and pure our kiss.
The deathless boon of living sings in us.
Let us with ravishment delirious
Possess each other, and in infinite bliss
Be born again, knowing life's mysteries!
Fold me and fill me with your hot caress,
O human goddess naked, exquisite!
I am drunken with your dazzling loveliness,
O queen of grace and beauty dowered with your
Young budding flesh so marvellously pure!