The Hours of Evening, VIII: When your hand

When your hand, on an evening of the sluggish months, commits to the odorous cupboards the fruits of your orchard, I seem to see you calmly arranging our old perfumed and sweet-tasting memories.

And my relish for them returns, as it was in former years in the gold and the sun and with the wind on my lips; and then I see a thousand moments done and gone, and their gladness and their laughter and their cries and their fevers.

The past reawakens with so great a desire to be the present still, with its life and strength, that the hardly extinguished fires suddenly burn my body, and my heart rejoices to the point of swooning.

O beautiful luminous fruits in these autumn shadows, jewels fallen from the heavy necklace of russet summer, splendours that light up our monotonous hours, what a ruddy and spacious awakening you stir up in us!