And Giving You Is Not Enough, You Lavish Yourself, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

And giving you is not enough, you lavish yourself:
The impulse that carries you to love us more strongly, always,
Leaps and leaps again, ceaselessly and without fatigue,
Always higher toward the great sky of full love.

A clasp of hands, a gentle look sets you ablaze;
And your heart appears to me so suddenly beautiful
That I fear, sometimes, your eyes and your lips,
And that I am unworthy of them and that you love me too much.

Ah! these clear ardors of a tenderness too high
For the poor human being who has only a poor heart
All soaked in regrets, all thorny with faults,
To feel them pass and dissolve into tears.

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-and-giving-you-is-not-enough-you-lavish-yourself-emile-verhaeren/