"The hour of steaming tea and banished books"

The rosy hearth, the lamplight's narrow beam,
The meditation that is rather dream,
With looks that lose themselves in cherished looks;
The hour of steaming tea and banished books;
The sweetness of the evening at an end,
The dear fatigue, and right to rest attained,
And worshipped expectation of the night,--
Oh, all these things, in unrelenting flight,
My dream pursues through all the vain delays,
Impatient of the weeks, mad at the days!


From Poems of Paul Verlaine, translated by Gertrude Hall

Ruhendes Paar, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, c.1907