Français
Español
Italiano
Deutsch
Português
Yes, the Anio still murmurs
The sweet name of Cynthia to the rocks of Tibur,
Vaucluse has retained the cherished name of Laura,
And Ferrara in the century to come
Will always murmur that of Eleanor!
Happy the beauty whom the poet adores!
Happy the name he has sung!
You, whom in secret his worship honors,
You can, you can die! in posterity
He bequeaths to what he loves an eternal life,
And the beloved and the lover on the wing of genius
Rise, with equal flight, to immortality!
Ah! if my frail skiff, battered by the storm,
Thanks to gentler winds, could emerge at port?
If fairer suns rose over my head?
If a lover’s tears, softening fate,
Warded off from my brow the shadows of death?
Perhaps?…, yes, forgive, O master of the lyre!
Perhaps I would dare, and what does a lover not dare?
Equal my boldness to the love that inspires me,
And, in rival songs celebrating my delirium,
Leave a monument of our love as well!
Thus the traveler who in his brief passage
Rests a moment in the shelter of the valley,
On the hospitable tree whose shade he enjoyed
Before departing, loves to carve his name!
Do you see how everything changes or dies in nature?
The earth loses its fruits, the forests their adornment;
The river loses its wave in the vast breast of the seas;
By a breath of winds the meadow is withered,
And the chariot of autumn, on the slope of the year,
Rolls, already pushed by the hand of winters!
Like a giant armed with an inevitable sword,
Striking at random all diverse beings,
Time with death, with tireless flight
Renews in fleeing this shifting universe!
Into eternal oblivion falls what it harvests:
So a swift summer sees its crown fall
Into the gleaners’ basket!
So a yellowed vine sees fertile autumn
Deliver its golden fruits to the harvesters’ cart!
You will fall thus, brief flowers of life!
Youth, love, pleasure, fugitive beauty!
Beauty, gift of a day that heaven envies us,
Thus you will fall, if the hand of genius
Does not restore immortality to you!
See with an eye of pity the common youth,
Brilliant with beauty, intoxicated with pleasure!
When she has drained her enchanting cup,
What will remain of her? scarcely a memory:
The tomb that awaits her swallows her entirely,
An eternal silence succeeds her loves;
But the centuries will have passed over your dust,
Elvire, and you will live forever!
Alphonse de Lamartine
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-to-elvire-alphonse-de-lamartine/