When our bright garden was gay
When our bright garden was gay with all its flowers, the regret at having shrunk our hearts sprang from our lips in moments of passion; and forgiveness, offered but deserved always, and the exaggerated display of our wretchedness and so many tears moistening our sad, sincere eyes uplifted our love.
But in these months of heavy rain, when everything huddles together and makes itself small, when brightness itself tires of thrusting back shadow and night, our soul is no longer vibrant and strong enough to confess our faults with rapture.
We tell them in slow speech; in truth, with affection still, but at the fall of the evening and no longer at dawn; sometimes even we count them on our ten fingers like things that we number and arrange in the house, and to lessen their folly or their number we debate them.