It Is the Good Hour When the Lamp Is Lit, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

It is the good hour when the lamp is lit:
All is so calm and consoling, this evening,
And the silence is such that one could hear fall
Feathers.

It is the good hour when, gently,
The beloved comes,
Like the breeze or the smoke,
All gently, all slowly.

She says nothing at first — and I listen to her;
And her soul, which I hear entirely,
I surprise it shining and springing forth
And I kiss it upon her eyes.

It is the good hour when the lamp is lit,
When the confessions
Of having loved each other all day long,
From the deep heart, profound but transparent,
Exhume themselves.

And we tell each other the simple things:
The fruit we picked in the garden;
The flower that opened,
Among the green mosses;
And the thought blossomed in sudden emotions,
At the memory of a word of faded tenderness
Surprised at the bottom of an old drawer,
On a note from last year.

Emile Verhaeren

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-it-is-the-good-hour-when-the-lamp-is-lit-emile-verhaeren/