Youth

 

 

I.

_Sunday_

 

Problems put by, the inevitable descent of heaven and the visit of

memories and the assembly of rhythms occupy the house, the head and the

world of the spirit.

 

--A horse scampers off on the suburban track, and along the tilled fields

and woodlands, pervaded by the carbonic plague. A miserable woman of

drama, somewhere in the world, sighs for improbable desertions.

Desperados pine for strife, drunkenness and wounds.-- Little children

stifle their maledictions along the rivers.

 

Let us resume our study to the noise of the consuming work that is

gathering and growing in the masses.

 

 

II.

_Sonnet_

 

_Man_ of ordinary constitution, was not the flesh a fruit hanging in the

orchard; O child days; the body, a treasure to squander; O to love, the

peril or the power of Psyche? The earth had slopes fertile in princes and

in artists, and lineage and race incited you to crimes and mournings: the

world, your fortune and your peril. But now, that labor crowned, you and

your calculations,-- you and your impatiences-- are only your dance and

your voice, not fixed and not forced, although a reason for the double

consequence of invention and of success,-- in fraternal and discreet

humanity through an imageless universe;-- might and right reflect your

dance and your voice, appreciated only at present.

 

 

III.

_Tewnty Years Old_

 

Instructive voices exiled... Physical candor bitterly quelled...

--Adagio.-- Ah! the infinite egotism of adolescence, the studious

optimism: how the world was full of flowers that summer! Airs and forms

dying... --A choir to calm impotence and absence! A choir of glasses, of

nocturnal melodies... Quickly, indeed, the nerves take up the chase.

 

 

IV.

 

You are still at Anthony's temptation. The antics of abated zeal, the

grimaces of childish pride, the collapse and the terror.

 

But you will set yourself at this labor: all harmonic and architectural

possibilities will surge around your seat. Perfect beings, never dreamed

of, will present themselves for your experiments. The curiosity of

ancient crowds and idle wealth will meditatively draw near. Your memory

and your senses will be simply the nourishment of your creative impulse.

As for the world, when you emerge, what will it have become? In any case,

nothing of what it seems at present.