Receipt

It is sweet to be loved.

The white roses by the tall window

Turned in the moonlight,

Swayed in the breeze that brought me their fragrance.

You, like a dark-rose,

Turned in the dusky room

And my mouth caught your breath's sweetness

Blown on the passion of your words.

It is sweet to be loved.

It is dear to perceive

How you are like spicy crisp violets,

And to know I am loved

While our supple and pliant young bodies are one.

It is dear to be loved.

It is painfully dear to perceive

How you are like odorous dusky roses

Dancing in the moonlight

That invades my decorous old-fashioned room,

And your hair, like leaves, flutters on your neck

Until you skip into my bed and my arms

Like a rose tossed to a lover.

In the dimness, in the quietude,

In the sleeping solitude of the town,

In your quiet breathing,

Some holiness descends upon me

And I whisper a song to your sleep:

Oh who would marry a moonbeam

Save he were a star?

Oh who would marry the seafoam

Save he were the moon?

In the heart of a flower

Only a bee can sleep.

Who dare espouse a torrent

But a swift bright trout?

A man may not mate with an odor of flowers-

It must be a south wind.

À man may not marry a fountain,

And there are no more gods.

I visited an abandoned playground of gods,

And there in the dark I heard a river rushing

Down the tilted floor of the valley,

And afar off the noise of waters falling

From the heights.

I was drowned in the noise of waters . . .

So love comes to you, rushes to you.

You are like a valley in high mountains

That the gods love and favor.

And sweetly you sleep . . .

It is sweet to be loved.

So to awake in the dawn,

With blue stealing upon the sky

As the temper creeps on dark steel

Turning it radiant... .

So to awake in the dawn,

Calm and so peaceful,

With the sound of the slow fishermen

Home from the night and the sea,

With the soft-booted tread of the fishermen

Returned from the restless dark sea

Filling the streets. . . .

It is sweet to have loved and to wake in the dawn

Calm, rested, contented and sure . . .

It is life to have loved... .

Wives and mistresses bring to their lovers and husbands

Immortality in offspring.

You have brought me memories forever,

Songs forever.

It is life to be loved-

You have given me life!