To Jeanne (I)

Poem by Victor Hugo Themes ChildhoodPeriod 19th century

I do not hide from you that I love animals too;
It amuses you and it instructs me; I feel
That it is not for nothing that into these fierce heads
God puts the chiaroscuro of the great trembling woods.

I am the curious one who, born to believe and to pity,
Probes, seeing the asp crawling beneath the roses,
The dark laws that make woman fear
The demon, when the flower does not fear the serpent.

While we give orders to the earth,
Kings copying the monkey and by him copied,
Doubting whether he is our work or our father,
Far below, in the fatal horror, beneath our feet,

Some black astonished world we know not watches us
And muses, and beneath a yoke, too often hateful,
We bend the humble monster and the haggard brute
Who, seeing us demons, take us for gods.

Oh! what strange laws! what tragic mingling!
Does one see the last fact, does one know the last word,
What specter can issue from Venus, and what angel
Can be born in the awful belly of Behemoth?

Transfiguration! mystery! abyss and summit!
The soul will cast off the body, somber rag;
The abject creature one day shall be sublime,
The being we hate as a caterpillar we love as a butterfly.

Victor Hugo

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