The Hours

The tiring hour that weeps,
And the young hour gay with sun,
Hour after hour creeps,
Hours after hours run
Along the river banks.

This is an hour of dawn that vapour cloaks.
Yonder a thread, so it would seem,
Stretches a bridge across the stream.
Shadow follows shadow, the mist chokes
The water sleepy as a moat's,
A tug smokes,
And drags its heavy, grating chain,
And drags its train
Of ghostlike boats,
Walls of black
Along a hidden track
Towards the arches blear
Where now they disappear.

Like sudden palms of gold,
Three sunbeams glide
To where the waters hide,
And all along the river in the cold
Life is again begun,
With all its joys
Of toil and noise
Awakening in the quivering, crimson sun.

The hour is rising radiant with mirth,
Beaming smiles down on the earth,
O festival of light!
Here is life that smiles upon its toil,
And with high forehead makes the night recoil
Towards the sun in heavens bright
With strength and with delight.

Life quickens on faces
Mad and fervent zest.
To live! is when the hot blood races
And swells the breast,
And makes the words leap out in ready throng!
Life is to be alone and strong,
And master of one's fate!
Ye floods of purple pour in state,
Ripen the morn, and roll men's blood along!

The wise
Have never lived and do not know what joys
Are in mad battle, carnage and great noise,
When courage with courage vies.
The wise
Are they who when the cautious eve creeps on to night
Exile themselves from the festival of light
Weeping its tears of proud gold on the river,
O'er the lamp-lit book to shiver.
To live
Is better, and to ring one's heel
On the floor of a palace won by crimsoned steel,
Or underneath a charger's hoofs to tread
The grass of roads down-trodden by the fugitive
Foe who has dyed them red.

But the young hour gay with sun,
The tiring hour that weeps,
Hour after hour creeps
Hours after hours run
Along the river banks.

Now cooler are noon's beams,
O dreams reposed with languor and with ease,
The waters creep,
O calm dreams!
Upon the moss in shade of elms and alder-trees
The peaceful fishers sleep;
A long thread swims upon the dying stream.
In the foliage never a shiver,
The sun darts never a beam,
All is dumb.
The earth around, the meadows and the river,
And the air with sunshine numb,
And the forest with its leafy houses,
Everywhere all action drowses,
And the earth hesitates with indecision,
A smoker's vague vision.

The only wisdom is to live
The hours of the river, sleeping on its slopes.
Why should we madly follow fugitive
Inclement pride and crumbling hopes
Along the precipices of the heavy night,
That swallows up all ruined light?
No! to live
Is to follow all the river's turnings,
Sailing one's life with dreams and yearnings,
With prow set to the Orient of oblivion,
To conquer all the sea and all the isles that smile,
That no discoverer will ever set foot on
Save he who kept desire a virgin, all the while,
O dream!

The young hour gay with sun,
The tiring hour that weeps,
Hour after hour creeps,
Hours after hours run,
Along the river banks.