Mysticis umbraculis

Stéphane Mallarmé

She slept: her finger trembled, amethyst-less
And naked, under her nightdress:

After a deep sigh, ceased, cambric raised to her waist.

And her belly seemed of snow on which might rest,

If a ray of light re-gilded the forest,

A bright goldfinch’s mossy nest.

Summer Sadness
 

The sun, on the sand, O sleeping wrestler,
Warms a languid bath in the gold of your hair,

Melting the incense on your hostile features,

Mixing an amorous liquid with the tears.

The immutable calm of this white burning,

O my fearful kisses, makes you say, sadly,

‘Will we ever be one mummified winding,

Under the ancient sands and palms so happy?’

But your tresses are a tepid river,

Where the soul that haunts us drowns, without a shiver

And finds the Nothingness you cannot know!

I’ll taste the unguent of your eyelids’ shore,

To see if it can grant to the heart, at your blow,

The insensibility of stones and the azure.

Sigh
 

My soul, towards your brow where O calm sister,
An autumn dreams, blotched by reddish smudges,

And towards the errant sky of your angelic eye

Climbs: as in a melancholy garden the true sigh

Of a white jet of water towards the Azure!

– To the Azure that October stirred, pale, pure,

That in the vast pools mirrors infinite languor,

And over dead water, where the leaves wander

The wind, in russet throes, dig their cold furrow,

Allows a long ray of yellow light to flow.