THE HOSPITAL
by: Maurice Maeterlinck
- HE hospital!
- The hospital on the banks of the canal,
- The hospital, and the month of July!
- They are lighting a fire in the ward,
- While the Atlantic steamers are whistling on the canal!
-
- (Do not go near the windows!)
- Here are the emigrants loitering through a palace,
- And I see a yacht in the tempest!
- And herds of cattle on all the ships!
-
- (It is better to keep the windows fastened,
- Then we are all but safe from the outside world!)
- One thinks of a forcing-frame placed upon a snow-drift,
- Or a woman being churched on a day of thunder;
- One catches a glimpse of plants scattered upon a blanket,
- And a conflagration on a sunny day,
- And I pass through a forest full of wounded men. . . .
-
- O, here at last is the moonlight!
-
- A fountain is playing in the middle of the ward!
- And a troop of little girls has opened the door!
- And lo, a glimpse of lambs in an isle of meadows!
- And beautiful plants on a glacier!
- And lilies in a hall of marble!
- There is a banquet in a virgin forest,
- And the vegetation of the tropics in a cavern of ice!
-
- Listen! They are opening the locks,
- And the ocean steamers are churning the waters of the canal!
-
- But see, the Sister of Charity is making up the fire!
-
- All the lovely green rushes of the banks are in flames
- And a boat full of wounded men is tossing in the moonlight!
- All the king's daughters are out in a boat in the storm!
- And the princesses are dying in a field of hemlock!
-
- Oh, do not unfasten the windows!
- Listen--the ocean steamers are still hooting on the horizon!
-
- They are poisoning some one in a garden!
- They are holding a splendid festival in the houses of the
enemy!
- There are deer in a beleaguered city!
- And a menagerie in a garden of lilies!
- And the jungle of the tropics in the depths of a coal-mine!
- A flock of sheep is crossing an iron bridge!
- And the lambs have come from the meadows and are mournfully
entering the ward!
-
- Now the Sister of Charity is lighting the lamps;
- Now she is bringing the patients their supper,
- She has closed the windows upon the canal,
- And all the doors to the light of the moon!
This English translation of 'The
Hospital' is reprinted from Poems by Maurice Maeterlinck.
Trans. Bernard Miall. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1915. |
MORE POEMS BY MAETERLINCK |
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