The Fountain
Poor tired love, your eyes are closed!
Stay through the night, and rest them well -
How nonchalant your sleeping pose
When lassitude has mastered you.
The fountain gossips in the square
Gently through the dark and day,
Speaks to the depths of ecstasy
Where I am plunged, tonight, by love.
The sheaf opens out
In a thousand flowers
That Phoebe, delighted
Touches with colours -
Arches and falls
In a rain of tears.
And thus your passion's soul, which fires
The scorching lightning of delights,
Strikes forward swifdy, fearlessly
Toward the vast enchanted skies,
Then dying, overflows herself,
Becomes a mournful, languorous flood
Invisibly, mysteriously
Flowing into my deepest heart.
The sheaf opens out
In a thousand flowers
That Phoebe, delighted
Touches with colours -
Arches and falls
In a rain of tears.
My dear, made lovelier by the night,
How sweet to me when on your breast
To listen to the old lament
That softly sobs about the pools!
Moon, sounding water, quivering trees,
The blessed midnight all above -
Your melancholy purity
Becomes the mirror of my love.
The sheaf opens out
In a thousand flowers
That Phoebe, delighted
Touches with colours -
Arches and falls
In a rain of tears.
Přeložil James McGowan