Contemporary Belgian Poetry / Selected and Translated by Jethro Bithell

by Unknown

MAURICE MAETERLINCK.

1862—.

THE HOTHOUSE.
O hothouse in the forest deeps!
And your doors for ever closed!
And all there is beneath your dome!
And under my soul in your analogies!
The thoughts of a princess who is hungry,
The weariness of a sailor in the desert,
A brass band at the windows of incurables.
Go to the wannest corners!
You think of a woman fainted on a day of harvest,
There are postillions in the courtyard of the hospital;
Afar goes by a hunter of elks, become a nurse.
Look around in the moonlight!
(O nothing here is in its place!)
You think of a mad woman before her judges,
A man-of-war at full sail on a canal,
Birds of night on lilies,
A knell at noon,
(Down yonder under these bell-glasses!)
A halting-place of sick men on the moorlands,
An odour of ether on a sunny day.
My God! my God! when shall we have the rain,
And the snow and the wind in the hothouse!
ORISON.
Pity my absence on
The threshold of my will!
My soul is helpless, wan,
With white inactions ill.
In tasks abandoned stands
My soul with sobbing pale,
O'er shut things its tired hands
Tremble without avail.
And while my heart breathes out
Bubbles of lilac dreams,
My soul is wafted about
In a wax moon's watery gleams;
In a moonlight where glimmer the lorn
Lilies of the to-morrows;
A moonlight where nothing is born
But its hands in the shadow of sorrows.
HOT-HOUSE OF WEARINESS.
O weariness blue in the breast!
Wedding the better sight,
In the weeping, wan moonlight,
Of my blue dreams with languor oppressed!
This weariness blue evermore,
Where through the deep windows green,
As in a hot-house are seen,
With moon and with glass covered o'er,
The mighty forests undying
Whose nightly forgetfulness,
Like a dream motionless,
On the roses of passion is lying;
Where rises a slow water-beam,
Mingling the moon and the sky
In a glaucous, eternal sigh,
Monotonous as a dream.
DARK OFFERING.
I bring my poor work, which
Is like the dreams of the dead,
And the moon on the fauna rich
Of my remorse is shed:
With swords my wishes crowned,
Violet snakes that creep
Through my dreams and enlace in my sleep,
Lions in sunshine drowned,
Lilies in far waters green,
Closed hands that never shall ope,
Red stems of hatred between
Sorrows of love without hope.
Pity the song, Lord God!
And let my sad prayers rise,
While the scattered moon on the sod
Keeps night at the rim of the skies.
THE HEART'S FOLIAGE.
Under the blue crystal bell
Of my reveries tired and ill,
My griefs intangible
Grow gradually still.
Plants of symbols thronging,
Lilies of pleasures of old,
The slow palms of my longing,
Bind-weeds soft, mosses cold.
Alone in the centre of them,
One rigid lily heaves
Its frail and pallid stem
Over the dolorous leaves.
And in the gleams that it pours,
Like a gradual moon, towards the bare
Blue crystal heavens, soars
Its mystical white prayer.
SOUL.
My soul!
O my soul too sheltered verily!
And these flocks of my desires in a hot-house!
Waiting for a tempest on the meadows!
Let us go to the most feverish patients!
They have strange exhalations.
In the middle of them, I cross a battlefield with my
mother.
They are burying a fallen comrade at noon,
While the sentinels are eating their repast.
Let us go also to the weakest:
They have strange perspirations!
Here is a sick bride,
Treason on the Sunday,
And little children in prison.
(And further on, through the vapour,)
Is this a dying woman at a kitchen's door!
Or a sister shelling peas at the bed's foot of an
incurable?
And last of all let us go to the most sad:
(Last of all, for they have poisons.)
O! my lips accept the kisses of a wounded one!
All the châtelaines have died of hunger, this summer, in
the turrets of my soul!
Here is the daybreak entering the festival!
I catch a glimpse of sheep that stray on quays,
And there is a sail at the windows of the hospital.
There is a long road from my heart unto my soul!
And all the sentinels are dead at their post!
One day there was a poor little banquet in the suburbs of
my soul!
Hemlock was being mown one Sunday morning;
And all the virgins of the convent were watching vessels
passing on the canal, one day of fasting and of
sunshine,
While the swans were pining under a poisonous bridge;
They were pruning trees round the prison,
They were bringing medicines one afternoon in June,
And meals of patients were being spread at all the
horizons!
My soul!
And the sadness of it all, my soul! and the sadness of
it all!
LASSITUDE.
These kisses know no longer where to rest,
For blind and cold the eyes were they caressed;
Henceforth asleep in splendid reverie they
Watch dreamily, as in the grass dogs may,
The grey horizon-herded sheep-folk graze
Upon the turf the moon's dishevelled rays,
Kissed by the sun, dark as their life is dark;
Indifferent, without an envious spark
For pleasure's roses under them unclosing;
And this long, green, ununderstood reposing.
TIRED WILD BEASTS.
O laughter and passion-sighs,
And sobs that the sick breast heaves!
Sick and with half-closed eyes
Among dishevelled leaves,
My hate's hyenas slouching,
My sin's yellow dogs, and, large,
At the weary, pale desert's marge,
The lions of love are crouching!
In a listless dream they lie,
And, languid and oppressed,
Under their colourless sky
They watch, and shall without rest,
Temptation's sheep together,
Or one by one, depart,
And in the moon at tether
The passions of my heart.
LUSTRELESS HOURS.
Here are old desires marching past,
Dream after dream reeling by,
Dream after dream failing fast;
Hope's days are doomed to die!
To whom must we flee to-day!
No star to show us whereto;
But ice on our hearts grown gray,
And in the moon linen blue.
Sob after sob is trapped!
Fireless the sick in the city,
The grass of the lambs is lapped
In snow, Sweet Saviour, pity!
But I, till the sleep is done,
Await, I shall waken soon,
I wait for a little sun
On my hands iced by the moon.
THE HOSPITAL.
Hospital! Hospital on the canal!
Hospital in July!
There is a fire in the room!
While ocean liners blow their whistle on the canal!
(O! do not come near the windows!)
Emigrants are crossing a palace!
I see a yacht in the tempest!
I see flocks on all the ships!
(It is better to keep all the windows closed,
One is almost sheltered from the outside.)
It is like a hot-house on snow,
You are going with a woman's churching on a stormy day,
You have a glimpse of plants shed o'er a linen sheet,
There is a conflagration in the sun,
And I cross a forest full of wounded men.
O! now at last the moonlight!
A jet of water rises in the middle of the room!
A troop of little girls half open the door!
I catch a glimpse of lambs on an island in the meadows!
And of beautiful plants on a glacier!
And lilies in a marble vestibule!
There is a festival in a virgin forest!
And an oriental vegetation in a cave of ice!
Listen! the locks are opened!
And the ocean liners stir the water of the canal!
O! but the sister of charity poking the fire!
All the beautiful green rushes of the banks are on fire!
A vessel full of wounded men rocks in the moonlight!
All the King's daughters are in a bark in the storm!
And the Princesses are going to die in a field of hemlock!
O! do not leave the lattices ajar!
Listen: the ocean liners still are blowing their whistle on
the horizon!
Some one is being poisoned in a garden!
People are banqueting in the house of their enemies!
There are stags in a town that is besieged!
And a menagerie amid the lilies!
There is a tropical vegetation in a coal-pit!
A flock of sheep is crossing an iron bridge!
And the lambs of the meadow are coming sadly into the room!
Now the sister of charity lights the lamps,
She brings the patients their meal,
She has closed the windows on the canal,
And all the doors to the moon.
WINTER DESIRES.
I weep for lips whose brief
Red no kisses hath known,
And for longing left to moan
In a reaped, rich harvest of grief.
The rain must pour and pour!
Or the snow is thick on the sward,
While crouching wolves do ward
My threshold of dreams evermore,
And watch in my soul ever sighing,
With eyes in the past nigh dead,
All the blood that of old was shed
Of lambs on the hard ice dying.
Only the moon with its chill,
Monotonous sadness lights,
While autumn the thin grass blights,
My longing with hunger ill.

ROUNDELAY OF WEARINESS.
I sing the dirges pale
Of kisses lost and cold;
On love's thin grass I behold
Weddings of them that ail.
In my slumber voices sing;
How nonchalant they are!
And in streets without sun or star
Lilies are opening.
These things my heart desired,
These flights that backward fall,
Are the poor in a palace hall,
And in the dawn candles tired.
At the grim night's threshold I launch
Mine eyes far out, and know
That the moon, with its linen slow
And blue, my dreams will stanch.
BURNING GLASS.
Ancient hours I behold
Under regrets ripening,
And fairer flora spring
From their secrets' azure mould.
Desires blow through my spirit.
O glass upon my desires!
And the withered grass my soul fires,
When breathing memories stir it.
It grows with my thoughts for mould,
And in the blue fleeing fast
I see the griefs of the past
Their flower-petals unfold.
My soul through memories gropes,
Feels the touch of their
Curtaining dead mohair;
And greens with other hopes.
LOOKS OF EYES.
O these looks of poor, tired eyes!
And yours and mine!
And those that are no more and those that shall be!
And those that never shall arrive and those that notwithstanding
do exist!
Some seem to be visiting the poor on a Sunday;
Some are like sick people with no home;
Some are like lambs in a meadow covered with linen.
And these unusual looks!
There are some under whose vault are people watching
the execution of a virgin in a closed room,
And some that make one think of unknown melancholies!
Of peasants at the windows of a factory,
Of a gardener who has turned weaver,
Of a summer afternoon in a museum of waxen images,
Of the thoughts of a queen who watches a sick man in
the garden,
Of an odour of camphor in the forest,
Of shutting a princess up in a tower, some festal day,
Of sailing for a whole week on a warm canal.
Pity all those who come out with short steps like convalescents
at harvest time!
Pity all those who look like children gone astray at
meal-time!
Pity the eyes of the wounded man who looks up at the
surgeon,
His looks like tents under the storm!
Pity the looks of the tempted virgin!
(O! rivers of milk are going to flee in the darkness!
And the swans are dead amid the serpents!)
And the looks of the virgin who succumbs!
Princesses abandoned in swamps without an issue!
And these eyes wherein vessels in full sail vanish lit by
the tempest!
And the pity of all these looks which suffer with not
being otherwhere!
And all the sufferings indistinct and yet diverse!
And these that never any one will understand!
And these poor looks nigh mute!
And these poor looks that whisper!
And these poor stifled looks!
Here in our midst one thinks one is in a castle which
serves as a hospital!
And so many others look like tents, lilies of war, on the
convent's narrow lawn!
And so many others look like wounded men being
tended in a hot-house!
And so many others look like a sister of charity on an
ocean liner where there are no sick!
O! to have seen all these looks!
To have taken all these looks into oneself!
And to have exhausted mine in meeting them!
And henceforth not to be able any more to close my
eyes!

THE SOUL IN THE NIGHT.
My soul in the end is tired;
Tired of her sad, sad state,
And of being undesired.
Sad and tired I await
Your hands upon my face.
I await your pure hands, still
As angels of ice might be,
Till they bring the ring to me:
On my face your fingers chill,
Like a treasure under the sea.
I await their healing deep,
Not to die in the sun,
To die without hope in the sun!
They wash my burning eyes,
Where so many poor ones sleep.
Where so many swans on the sea,
Are stretching, lost on the main,
Their necks morose in vain,
Where along the gardens of winter,
The sick break roses in rain.
I wait for your pure fingers yet,
Like angels of ice are they,
I wait till mine eyes they wet,
The withered grass of mine eyes,
Where the tired lambs are astray!

SONGS.
I.
Into a cave the maid she threw,
A sign upon the door she drew;
The maid forgot the light, the key
Fell down into the sea.
She waited while the summer went:
More than seven years she was pent,
Every year a stranger passed.
She waited while the winter went;
And while she waited, waited yet,
Her hair the light could not forget.
It sought the light, and found it out,
It glided through the stones about,
And lit the rocks that held her pent.
One eve again a passer-by,
He knew not what the radiance meant,
And dared not come anigh.
He thinks a portent is foretold,
He thinks it is a well of gold.
He thinks the angels are at play,
He turns aside, and wends his way.

II.
And if he come back some day,
What shall be said to him?—
One for him waited, say,
Until her eyes grew dim....
And if again he spake,
And did not know me more?—
Like a sister answer make,
He might be suffering sore....
And if he would be told
Where you are dwelling now?—
Give him my ring of gold,
And bend your silent brow....
And if he miss the clock's tick,
And see the dust on the floor?—
Show him the lamp's burnt wick,
Show him the open door....
And if his last he saith,
And ask how you fell asleep?—
Tell him I smiled in death,
For fear lest he should weep....
III.
Three little maidens they have slain
To find out what their hearts contain
The first of them was brimmed with bliss,
And everywhere her blood was shed
For full three years three serpents hiss.
The second full of kindness sweet,
And everywhere her blood was shed,
Three lambs three years have grass to eat.
The third was full of pain and rue,
And everywhere her blood was shed,
Three seraphim watch three years through.
IV.
The maids with the bandaged eyes
(Do off the bands of gold)
The maids with the bandaged eyes
Are seeking their destinies....
Went in at the noon of day
(Keep on the bands of gold)
In at the gate went they
Of the palace of prairies gray....
Life saluting then,
(Tie close the bands of gold)
Life saluting then,
They never came out again.
V.
The three blind sisters,
(Let not our hope grow cold)
The three blind sisters
Have their lamps of gold.
Into the tower they climb,
(We, you, and they)
Into the tower they climb,
Wait till the seventh day....
Ah! said the first one,
(Still hopes the heart, and fights)
Ah! said the first one,
I can hear our lights....
Ah! said the second, bending,
(They, you, and we)
Ah! said the second, bending,
It is the King ascending....
Nay, said the saintliest,
(Still be our courage stout)
Nay, said the saintliest,
Our lights have all gone out....
VI.
The seven virgins of Orlamonde,
When the fairy had passed away,
The seven virgins of Orlamonde,
Sought the gates of day.
Have lit the wick of their seven lanterns,
Have opened, flight by flight,
The door of full four hundred chambers,
But have not found the light ...
They come unto the sounding caverns,
Go down, with courage cold,
And in the lock of a closed portal
Find a key of gold.
Through the chinks they see the ocean,
They are afraid of death,
Dare not ope, knock at the portal,
With bated breath.
VII.
She had three diadems of gold,
To whom did she give them?
Does one unto her parents bring:
And they have bought three reeds of gold,
And kept it till the Spring.
Gives one unto her lovers all:
And they have bought three nets of silver,
And kept it till the Fall.
One she to her children brings:
And they have brought three iron rings,
And chained it up the Winter long.
VIII.
Towards the palace she came—
The sun was scarcely rising—
Towards the palace she came,
The knights all gazed, surmising,
Silent was every dame.
She stopped before the gate—
The sun was scarcely rising—
She stopped before the gate;
They heard the Queen descending,
And the King questioning her.
Where are you wending, where are you wending?
One scarce can see, take care—
Where are you wending, where are you wending?
Does some one wait for you there?
But she made answer not.
She came down towards the Stranger,—
Take care, one scarce can see—
She came down towards the Stranger;
The Stranger kissed the Queen,
No word did either say,
But went straightway.
The King at the gate was weeping;—
Take care, one scarce can see—
The King at the gate was weeping;
They heard the Queen departing,
They heard the leaves down-sweeping.
IX.
You have lighted the lamps,—
O! the sun in the garden!
You have lighted the lamps,
The sun through the fissures slants,
Open the gates of the garden!
The keys of the doors are lost,
We must wait, we must wait always,
The keys are fallen from the tower,
We must wait, we must wait always,
We must wait for other days ...
Other days shall open the doors,
The forest keeps the bolts,
Around us burn the holts,
It is the light of the dead leaves,
Which burn on the doors' thresholds ...
The other days are wearisome,
The other days are also shy,
The other days will never come,
The other days shall also die,
We too shall die here by and bye.
X.
I have sought for thirty years, my sisters,
Where hides he ever?
I have sought for thirty years, my sisters,
And found him never ...
I have walked for thirty years, my sisters,
Tired are my feet and hot,
He was everywhere, my sisters,
Existing not ...
The hour is sad in the end, my sisters,
Take off my shoon,
The evening is dying also, my sisters,
My sick soul will swoon ...
Your years are sixteen, my sisters,
The far plains are blue,
Take you my staff, my sisters,
Seek also you ...

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