The Shining Hours (XVII) - Emile Verhaeren

That we may love each other through our eyes,
    Let us our glances lave, and make them clear
Of all the thousand glances that they here
Have met, in this base world of servile lies.

The dawn is dressed in blossom and in dew,
    And chequered too
    With very tender light—it looks as though
Frail plumes of sun and silver, through the mist,
Glided across the garden to and fro,
And with a soft caress the mosses kissed.

Our wondrous ponds of blue
Tremble and wake with golden shimmerings;
Swift emerald flights beneath the trees dart through,
And now the light from hedge and path anew
Sweeps the damp dust, where yet the twilight clings.

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Emile Verhaeren (1855 - 1916) Belgium
Translated by Alma Strettell
Source: Poems of Emile Verhaeren selected and rendered into English by Alma Strettell The Bodley Head, 1915 (on Project Gutenberg)