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The word leise occurs three times in “Roman Fountain” (New Poems 1907). I propose possible translations to the right of the text: Two basins, one rising above the other out of an old round marble rim and out of the upper water leise leaning [softly, quietly, gently] down to the water waiting underneath, which, receiving silently its leise talking [easy, gentle] and secretly, as in the hollow of a hand, behind green and dark, mirroring the sky like an unknown thing; floating calmly in its lovely bowl without regret, circle on circle, only sometimes dreamily dripping threads onto the mossy carvings underneath to the last mirror which makes its basin leise smile with passage. (475) [gently, tenderly, softly] The verbal tense in the poem is throughout in the present progressive, as if the movements of gentleness had neither beginning nor end. The first basin “is leaning” “neigend” its water down to the second basin; that in turn, rhyming with the first basin, receives it nonetheless “silently” “entgegenschweigend,” its surface is gently rippled to distort the sky behind the green and dark into an “unknown thing” while it calms and only sometimes “dreamily” drips a thread of water onto the mossy rim to make it “gently smile with passage.”