OW my desires no more, alas, <br />Summon my soul to my eyelids' brink, <br />For with its prayers that ebb and pass <br />It too must sink, <br /> <br />To lie in the depth of my closéd eyes; <br />Only the flowers of its weary breath <br />Like icy blooms to the surface rise, <br />Lilies of death. <br /> <br />Its lips are sealed, in the depths of woe, <br />And a world away, in the far-off gloom, <br />They sing of azure stems that grow <br />A mystic bloom. <br /> <br />But lo, its fingers--I have grown <br />Pallid beholding them, I who perceive <br />Them traces the marks its poor unblown <br />Lost lilies leave. <br /> <br />And I know it must die, for its hour is o'er; <br />Folding its impotent hands at last, <br />Hands too weary to pluck any more <br />The flowers of the past!<br /><br />Maurice Polydore-Marie-Bernard Maeterlinck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/aquarium-5/
