My Resonant Angels Came Poem by Charles van Lerberghe

My resonant angels came
Among the roses of sunrise,

Like a peal of laughter in the air
Or breezes over the waves.

I held fast, my hands clasped before them,
And silently stood still.

They greeted me with the wind of their wings
And fell to my knees.

They said: Behold your handmaids,
As their breaths brushed my body.

Their lips did not sing with the first light,
Nothing but a kiss were their words.

My joyous angels came
In the great, diaphanous morning,

Closing the world to my eyes
With a horizon of snow and flame.

And from my white feet to my golden head
They scattered me with flowers,

Tracing great waves,
Bright spirals of splendour.

Then quivering, bewinged over me,
In my entirety and all of them at once,

To the depth of their thirst-corrupted souls,
Languorously, gently, like a shadow, drank me in.