Ode by Henri De Regnier

Excerpt from Ode III

I have know you, dear naked Shade, with your
hair heavy with sunlight and pale gold, with your
smiling mouth and your sweet flesh. From my most
distant days beyond, you have come, at the ends
of old roads of corn and mosses, along meadows,
besides woods, when I followed the path and the brook,
happy in the clear brook and the fresh pathway,
and in my hands, between my fingers, the flower
fathered in the thick grass was all damp with dew
and trembling with the gold of a resting bee.

Henri De Regnier

Translated by Amy Lowell


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