Talk of the Heart: Fire!

Is that fire in the palm of your hand?
Take it off my wrist, I beg you!
... There before you is the dew-moist heart of the night —
it may soften a blaze,
so that your troubled features clear
and the straining of the veins at your temples grows still...

Let your eyes range over the darkening horizon;
the breezes of autumn will fan them — nothing fresher, nothing more tender!
But oh, my fear, should I search it for the night's joyous star,
that I should find her drowned in blood!
And I grow heavy-hearted...
for perhaps I am the cause!!

Exchange, my friend, your silence and your brooding for mirth;
here is the sand of the sea, grown cool before its water —
Stretch out upon it. Roll upon it. Take the spray of the waves upon your face...
... Perhaps in this, or in that, you will find your cure.

... Take your burning palm off my wrist.
And I — what am I to do?
What fate, I ask you, would have been mine
had it answered every palm —
this wrist of mine!??