Page 9 sur 83

These verses will not lie in little well-printed books upon

ladies' tables, who turn the pages with indolent hands that they

may sigh over a life without meaning, which is yet all they can

know of life, or be carried by students at the university to be

laid aside when the work of life begins, but, as the generations

pass, travellers will hum them on the highway and men rowing upon

the rivers. Lovers, while they await one another, shall find, in

murmuring them, this love of God a magic gulf wherein their own

more bitter passion may bathe and renew its youth. At every

moment the heart of this poet flows outward to these without

derogation or condescension, for it has known that they will

understand; and it has filled itself with the circumstance of

their lives.