Rêve d’Ossian

by Hugo Lambert

for Oriza L. Legrand

Unclose your eyes.

The sun has returned. Its golden rays pierce through the spindrift, the billowing spindrift like winter haze. The sun has returned over the foamy shores, over the winey sea – it has returned, my precious, and nestles in the hollow of your hand.

There it comes, the flaming torch of the Earth, to kindle the day which comes. Of a fallow gold, a treacly gold, the pollen gold which flies in primrose morns and nestles in the argent of your hands.

Such sunbeam, like distilled gold, that sea drops and salt grains diffract, is a flame wreathing the crest of thunderous waves as they crash upon the feet of nightful cliffs.

 Unclose your eyes and be not afeard, the sun and its day, the sun is here. It conquers the ocean and slowly turns to red and burnish is the sky cladden in purple clouds and the rounded sea is silenced and suddenly wanes, it cowers and the distance and wizens at bay. There comes the day, my precious, to enlighten thy chere.

Thy copper-coloured chere, this map of two worlds and your cobalt-blue eyes betraying your sorcery. Unclose them, such unique eyes, such modest eyes, such magical eyes where my eternity doth lie. Unclose them, they the witness of our loves ; unclose them, they the reflection of our wounds ; unclose them like your lips, unclose them like my hands as I dive in prayer in the awakening of day.

Such eyes, such dream ; unclose them and take my hand for the sun has returned and the tempest quailed and the shadows have gone afar like by magic spell, all have cowered at thy sight and away from mine, away from our bodies in one another coiled. There rises from the Earth a shiver and a song, a canticle of forests far hidden in the frost.

Lickeen and thistle and ocean pines ; peat and mud fresh, terebinth and fawn hide ; roses and narcissus and all flowers of the night ; smoke and needles and flashes of incense bright ; East and West and childish snowflakes. They sing aloud an hymn rising from the barrows, a canticle which comes down the sorrowful hills like the frost of brisk mornings. I hear a cry from the land and the beating heart of trees.

Unclose your eyes and see, my precious, the world around thee, the world lost in woe. Unclose your eyes, my treasure, and see the dust of daylight sprinkled and sparkling o’er the sleeping countryside, bringing colours back to life, melting the ice and harvesting the dew – the snow is going back whence it fell.

Unclose your eyes and see the horizon and its belfries rising from Orient to Occident, spires of marble and spires of bronze wherein shall sound anon the tunes of morning and of fishermen’s wives. The silence of Scotia after its wrath and haunted nights, of Scotia and its myths and its heroes riding ere dawn rises the neck of northern lights.

Water nymphs and daemons of the ocean, the dryads and the elves, centaurs and fickle-lights ; salt and frost and all the elements ; hail and snows, haze and winter blows – they all gather in your name. Unclose your eyes and see.

Unclose your eyes and come back to me.

Come back to me from the world below.

There is without you naught but ruins, forest fossils and carcasses of stones which a light incandescent like gold adorns. There is without you naught but a void and a silence, a pallid light piercing through the mute canopies of forsaken groves.

There is without you no canticles in the land. There is without you no salt in the Earth.

Arise, my precious, arise my Ossian and begone from the realms below.

For there is without you no fear nor joy no more ; no pain nor faith nor savour in the world. Unclose your eyes and see and come hither for this dawn not to be our last.

And press against my lips the sweet salt of your skin.

And press against my lips the olibanum of your words.

And press against my lips the cloves of thy love.

And the balm of thy return.

Yes, let me taste the warmth of an elemi.

And a shining vanilla.

The candour of citrus trees,

And the light of your iris.

The cold plumes of smoke wafting from damp forests.

The dry soil of summer heaths.

The waxen floors of Scotian abbeys.

The iode of the sea.

The iron of the Earth.

The cinnamon of your kiss.

Unclose your eyes, the sun has returned.

Arise my Ossian.

For lest you be,

I be no more.

Rêve d’Ossian - Oriza L. Legrand

EdP 100ml - 130€

Available in Paris and online. For more informations, check their website : www.orizaparfums.com