From the Cycle Once

Firefly, if I believe once that all your beauty is a charm of the gloom reigning around you, what would I do, then? * The house that I had once under a table, was larger, and warmer, and cosier; And I could travel, with that wooden horse, much faster, much safer. * The brilliance of a big light is often not so dazzling as then, in the pitch darkness, when one’s eyes open. * Among all bad times the worst is mine. But I do love it because I know: We met this single time. And also I know that once I’ll miss it, oh, so dearly! * It was as easy, for my granny, to pick wild white roses as stars among the thorns of night. However, once she scratched her hand on Death and, after that, she left her old bijouterie to me: A dry bunch of violets put in a book, and a white collar knitted by herself. * Once I beseeched one saint to help me in the trouble, and he did. I thought: O Lord, how pitiful I am if he himself had already perceived all.