"the innocence of your fragrance"

Because the rare perfume

Of your swanlike paleness,

Because the innocence

  Of your fragrance,

Ah, because all your being,

Music so piercing,

Clouds of lost angels,

  Tones and scents,

Has by soft cadences

With its correspondences,

Lured my subtle heart, Oh

  Let it be so!

From "To Clymène" by Paul Verlaine, translated by A.S Kline, text from Poetry in Translation


Study to the Morning, Philipp Otto Runge, 1809