Like Others, the Hour and the Mood, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

Like others, the hour and the mood:
The sullen hour or the malevolent mood
Have marked our heart with their black seals,
But nevertheless, never,
Even on the evenings of bad days
Have our hearts spoken the fatal words to each other.

Clear, ardent, illuminated sincerity
Was joy and counsel to us,
So that our passionate soul
Always renewed itself in it, as in a vermilion stream.

And we told each other our poorest miseries,
Telling them off like a harsh rosary,
One before the other, sobbing with love;
And gently and in turn
On our lips that spoke them aloud
Our two mouths, at each confession, kissed our faults.

Thus,
Very simply, without cowardice or blasphemy,
We saved ourselves from the world and from ourselves,
Sparing ourselves griefs and gnawing cares,
And watching our soul be reborn,
As is reborn after the rain,
When the sun warms it and gently dries it,
The purity of glass and gold of a window.

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-comme-a-dautres-lheure-et-lhumeur-emile-verhaeren/