Quai D'orsay: A Parisian Dry-Point
WHAT children dance by night in Paris gardens?
Black water long has slipped beneath the bridges.
Down the wide alleys of the Tuileries
Yonder the urgent drummer-boy has passed,
And the tall guardians of the public walks,
Inexorable and stern, have driven home
The lovers and solitary loiterers,
This fresh and eager night of June. O June!
Thy chestnuts and thy poplars and thy lindens,
Thy broad-leaved sycamores with mottled boles,
Thine ivy and thy tall aspiring lilacs
Have put on all their green. It is the fête
Of summer joy throughout the spacious city.
Yet was I not prepared for such a vision
In midmost Paris, near the hour of midnight.
Down the wide alleys of the Tuileries
Yonder the urgent drummer-boy has passed,
And the tall guardians of the public walks,
Inexorable and stern, have driven home
The lovers and solitary loiterers,
This fresh and eager night of June. O June!
Thy chestnuts and thy poplars and thy lindens,
Thy broad-leaved sycamores with mottled boles,
Thine ivy and thy tall aspiring lilacs
Have put on all their green. It is the fête
Of summer joy throughout the spacious city.
Yet was I not prepared for such a vision
In midmost Paris, near the hour of midnight.
Through the barred gateway of this high-walled garden,
Discreet behind its proud hotel, behold
A scene of mild and summer-golden radiance
Such as an airy child’s heart might imagine
Along the floor of rosy summer clouds
And in the very embrace of azure heaven.
And truly ’t is no paradise imagined
But real heaven to the troops of children
Who foot it lightly up and down the pathways
Threading geranium beds and heliotrope
(There is no wistfulness in childish laughter).
Discreet behind its proud hotel, behold
A scene of mild and summer-golden radiance
Such as an airy child’s heart might imagine
Along the floor of rosy summer clouds
And in the very embrace of azure heaven.
And truly ’t is no paradise imagined
But real heaven to the troops of children
Who foot it lightly up and down the pathways
Threading geranium beds and heliotrope
(There is no wistfulness in childish laughter).
For while their happy little feet all bare
Deliciously do spurn the moistened gravel,
Or linger a moment on the cooler greensward,
And forward bound to strains of hidden music,
They are no longer little girls in Paris,
But charioteers and mettled steeds careering
Along the sunny arch of noonday heaven.
Or now with shifting lights upon them falling
And play of waving veils and sinuous motion,
They are transformed to elemental spirits,
Waters and winds and planetary bodies.
As when the earth, blocking the radiant sun,
Shoots into space its spectral cone of shadow,
And the bright face of the moon darkens and saddens,
So falls the dusk upon these fluttering fleeces —
For but an instant — and the moment after
You see the dazzle of light upon the ocean,
Welter of green and orange and blue and silver:
And ever the circling motion of steady planets
That wheel their orbits round the suns that bore them,
Girdled themselves with moons and phosphorescence.
Deliciously do spurn the moistened gravel,
Or linger a moment on the cooler greensward,
And forward bound to strains of hidden music,
They are no longer little girls in Paris,
But charioteers and mettled steeds careering
Along the sunny arch of noonday heaven.
Or now with shifting lights upon them falling
And play of waving veils and sinuous motion,
They are transformed to elemental spirits,
Waters and winds and planetary bodies.
As when the earth, blocking the radiant sun,
Shoots into space its spectral cone of shadow,
And the bright face of the moon darkens and saddens,
So falls the dusk upon these fluttering fleeces —
For but an instant — and the moment after
You see the dazzle of light upon the ocean,
Welter of green and orange and blue and silver:
And ever the circling motion of steady planets
That wheel their orbits round the suns that bore them,
Girdled themselves with moons and phosphorescence.
And yet these are but little girls in Paris,
In midmost Paris, near the hour of midnight.
What little girls? and whence? — a throng of questions —
And whither from this garden to emerge,
From this enchantment into disenchantment?
Whose children? For she cannot be their mother
Who guides their motions in her foreign speech,
Her brisk and uncaressing English tongue,
Nor he the father who, in shrill Parisian,
Commands the shift of lights upon the dancing,
And from his balcony surveys the stage,
Reckoning up perchance his future profits.
From many firesides have they been gathered,
From hearths whereon the fire is extinguished,
Or hearths whereon no fire was ever lighted.
How many griefs and shames lurk in the shadow
For every sparkle of laughter in the light!
In midmost Paris, near the hour of midnight.
What little girls? and whence? — a throng of questions —
And whither from this garden to emerge,
From this enchantment into disenchantment?
Whose children? For she cannot be their mother
Who guides their motions in her foreign speech,
Her brisk and uncaressing English tongue,
Nor he the father who, in shrill Parisian,
Commands the shift of lights upon the dancing,
And from his balcony surveys the stage,
Reckoning up perchance his future profits.
From many firesides have they been gathered,
From hearths whereon the fire is extinguished,
Or hearths whereon no fire was ever lighted.
How many griefs and shames lurk in the shadow
For every sparkle of laughter in the light!
Our questions rest unanswered. Backward peering,
Merciful darkness greets us, and pitiful darkness
Forward, as this illumined garden stands
Rounded with dusky Paris, and as life
Upon our short-lived planet sparkles and glows
Among the soundless glooms of eternity.
Only this night of June we hear the voices
And the fresh laughter of the witless children
Lost in the joy of motion and sensation,
And among all the riddles, this is certain,
That children dance to-night in Paris gardens.
Merciful darkness greets us, and pitiful darkness
Forward, as this illumined garden stands
Rounded with dusky Paris, and as life
Upon our short-lived planet sparkles and glows
Among the soundless glooms of eternity.
Only this night of June we hear the voices
And the fresh laughter of the witless children
Lost in the joy of motion and sensation,
And among all the riddles, this is certain,
That children dance to-night in Paris gardens.