PALE NIGHT VIOLET
Here I shall sit and write you. It is late.
The red sun dives beneath the distant trees;
Bushes and leaves, lulled faintly by the breeze,
Merge in the dusk where night’s dark sentries wait.
Sleep softly enters through the garden gate,
Closes the wells of fragrance where the bees
Have hummed all day; but sweet with memories
The pale night violet wakes in hidden state.
Love, when our lives move westward with the sun,
And light is slanting dimly through the brake
From that deep verge where all our days have set,
Then. From our closing dreams, a single one
Shall rise above the sleepers, and awake
With fragrance like the pale night violet.
Words: Frederik Paludan-Muller
Translated from the Danish
by Robert Silliman Hillyer
Music: Thomas Laursen
