The Shining Hours, I: O the splendour of our joy

O the splendour of our joy, woven of gold in the silken air!

Here is our pleasant house and its airy gables, and the garden and the orchard.

Here is the bench beneath the apple-trees, whence the white spring is shed in slow, caressing petals.

Here flights of luminous wood-pigeons, like harbingers, soar in the clear sky of the countryside.

Here, kisses fallen upon earth from the mouth of the frail azure, are two blue ponds, simple and pure, artlessly bordered with involuntary flowers.

O the splendour of our joy and of ourselves in this garden where we live upon our emblems.