Sonnet Poem by Stéphane Mallarmé

(For your dead wife, her friend)
2 November, 1877

- 'On the forgotten woods when sombre winter passes
You complain, lonely threshold's prisoner,
That this double sepulchre which is to be our pride
Alone with the lack of great posies is loaded.
Without hearing Midnight cast its vain number,
A vigil exalts you to continue awake
Until in the arms of the old armchair
The last fireglow has illumined my Shade.
He who would oft have the Visitor should not
By too many flowers charge the tomb that my finger
Lifts with the lassitude of a force defunct.
Soul trembling at the so clear hearth to be seated,
To live again it suffices that I borrow from your lips
The breath of my name murmured the evening long.'