Hearts and choirs of primroses in the moist, shadowy mosses of the woods; long threads of rose and blue dew floating and swinging and suspended—­from what?—­in the immaterial morning; tree-frogs with golden eye-lids and white throbbing throats; furze whose perfume of faded peach and rose follows along the roads, already torrid....

Iris, cries of jays, turtledoves, mountains of blue snow which are rocks of azure, green fields laid out in squares, brook rolling a golden pebble in the silence; first foliage of the waters, icy trembling of the body beside the springs when the sun lies burning on your hands....

* * * * *

Slender alders; fiery marshes where toward noonday puffing out their throat, the hoarse gray frogs climb up on the coriaceous plants, while slowly from the deep of the shady and gilded mire rises a bubble....

Dry and twisted vines; swarms of insects from the blossoms of rosy peach-trees, in slanting flight into the azure; pear-trees and roses of Bengal....

* * * * *

Setting of the cherry sun; nocturnal snow of a fruit-tree; green and transparent shadowing of the lanes; summit of little hills at seven o’clock where the trees are like sponges which little by little blend into the severity of the uniform curve which swells and rises sharply.

Starless night; violet night in which the white sandals of a beloved pagan can hardly be distinguished, and dense bristling of slender, dry trees; pallor of a limestone slope, and water in which something casts two long and deep shadows....

Night; fire; lines of shadow blended with shadows of lines; fire; humid thickness of fields; fire; crimsoning and reddening of clouds; poplars; whiteness which must be a village.  Water again, water, and shadows of water....

A wagon passes.  The lantern lights up only the rear of the horse, all else is night.  When I was a child it was this which astonished me—­this light which was quenched again.  Another wagon...One sees only the rosy bust of a girl.  It slips into the night....

* * * * *

I return from a journey.  The recollection of a maroon reflection of a boat in the canal, the color of gray fish, makes my memory quiver.  I dream of white tulips.

I have returned at night.  The croaking of frogs has greeted me from the depths of the damp meadow.  My heart, do not burst!...  Do not burst like the lilacs of the flower-garden whose fragrance I alone have touched....

Will hope be born again?  I am afraid.  Is this one more disillusion?

The wasp has hummed.  I love none but the violet lilacs, I love none but the blue violets.  It is Sunday, and I hear in the depths of my soul the droning of the harmoniums of poor churches.

My life, behold my life, ardent and sad like a flame which burns through too warm a summer night beside the open window.  An imperceptible breeze has suddenly swelled out the curtain of muslin like my heart.