poem x

AQUARIUM 

by: Maurice Maeterlinck

Now my desires no more, alas,

Summon my soul to my eyelids' brink,

For with its prayers that ebb and pass

It too must sink,

 

To lie in the depth of my closéd eyes;

Only the flowers of its weary breath

Like icy blooms to the surface rise,

Lilies of death.

 

Its lips are sealed, in the depths of woe,

And a world away, in the far-off gloom,

They sing of azure stems that grow

A mystic bloom.

 

But lo, its fingers--I have grown

Pallid beholding them, I who perceive

Them traces the marks its poor unblown

Lost lilies leave.

 

And I know it must die, for its hour is o'er;

Folding its impotent hands at last,

Hands too weary to pluck any more

The flowers of the past!