ON A WHITE TOMB

“She has died… she has died”… they say so clearly that I don't understand…
To spill so sweet a liquor into so terrible a cup!…
Perhaps your divine gaze was a strange illness,
Your heavenly soul, or your delicate profile…

Perhaps your arms were two blossoms of wings…
The gardens, the rooms, were heaven as you passed…
And you appeared to the world sweet, like a dead woman!
Perhaps your window remained open one night,

—Oh, temptation of wings, an open window!—

And through the purest star an angel seduced you…
And your wings opened, and cut the height
With a clipping of light and innocence!

And in the chamber that your soul covered with ermine,
Where the vases of roses of tenderness burned,
In silence, loneliness was calling to horror…