When you're tired of books and the dusty, well-known room

It's good to put on a gown and go for a walk,

Taking deep breaths and smelling the hawthorn bloom

By the canal, where shadowy lovers talk.

They are far too happy to care if anyone passes,

And you envy a little, as you go along,

Those happy lovers of the lower classes

Whose emotions are like the rhythm of a rag-time song.

The breath of the summer night is about your head,

Burdened with fragrance, lulling the brain to sleep,

You begin to forget the dull things you have read,

And just go walking on and breathing deep.

They have been sitting here until eleven,

The loud and the quiet and the one who is never shocked,

And we talked of most of the things between hell and heaven,

But now the last friend has gone and the door is locked.

And I cannot help feeling, though it's rather silly,

A little afraid to be left so quiet and alone;

I can hear a petal drop from the tiger-lily,

So complete and awful has the silence grown.

I long to hear that tramp of the policeman's

Outside the shutters, but the night is dumb,

And in a state of tension unknown to Huysmans

I wait and wait for the sound that will not come.