A demon wishing to interrupt her prayers
extinguished
the light she carried, but divine power rekindled it.
19th Century French Poetry
Are you king, you the sole or the last lover? . . .
Love him who loved you from cradle to bier;
She I alone loved still loves me tenderly:
She is death - or the dead one. . . O joy! O torment!
The rose she holds is the Rose tremiere.
Neapolitan saint with your hands full of fire,
Rose with violet heart, Saint Gudula's flower:
Have you found your cross in the desert of heaven?
White roses: fall! You insult our gods,
Fall, white wraiths, from your burning skies:
- She, saint of the abyss, holier to my eyes!
Note: The Rose tremiere is the hollyhock. St Gudula was a Brabant saint (late 7th-early 8th century), patroness of Brussels.
A demon wishing to interrupt her prayers extinguished the light she carried, but divine power rekindled it. The flower-like fungus once called 'tremella deliquescens' (Dacrymyces deliquescens), is known as 'Sinte Goulds lampken' (St. Gudula's lantern).
Golden Lines
Well, then! All is sentient!
Pythagoras
Free-thinker, Man, do you think you alone
Think, while life explodes everywhere?
Your freedom employs the powers you own,
But world is absent from all your affairs.
Respect an active spirit in the creature:
Each flower is a soul open to Nature;
In metal a mystery of love is sleeping;
'All is sentient! ' Has power over your being.
Fear the gaze in the blind wall that watches:
There is a verb attached to matter itself. . .
Do not let it serve some impious purpose!
Often a hidden god inhabits obscure being;
And like an eye, born, covered by its eyelids,
Pure spirit grows beneath the surface of stones!
Alfred de Musset (1810-1857)
Alfred de Musset
'Alfred de Musset'
Four men in the life of George Sand. Jules Sandeau.
