Nocturne

You that have heard the heartbeat of the night,you that have heard, in the long, sleepless hours,a closing door, the rumble of distant wheels,a vague echo, a wandering sound from somewhere:you, in the moments of mysterious silence,when the forgotten ones issue from their prison--in the hour of the dead,

In the hour of repose--will know how to read the bitterness in my verses.

I fill them, as one would fill a glass, with allmy grief for remote memories and black misfortunes,the nostalgia of my flower-intoxicated souland the pain of a heart grown sorrowful with fêtes;with the burden of not being what I might have been,the loss of the kingdom that was awaiting me,the thought of the instant when I might not have been bornand the dream my life has been ever since I was!

All this has come in the midst of that boundless silencein which the night develops earthly illusions,and I feel as if an echo of the world's hearthad penetrated and disturbed my own.