To a Dried Flower in an Album, Poem by Alphonse De Lamartine

Poem by Alphonse De Lamartine Collection New Poetic MeditationsPeriod 19th century

I remember it, it was on the shores
Where a Southern sky draws me,
A sky without stain and without storms,
Where I breathed beneath the foliage
The perfumes of a tepid air.

A sea that no shore checks
Stretched blue to the horizon;
The orange tree, that festive tree,
Snowed at moments on my head;
Scents rose from the grass.

You grew beside a column
Of a temple crushed by time;
You made it a crown,
You adorned its monotonous trunk
With your floating capitals;

Flower that decks the ruin
Without a glance to admire you!
I picked your white stamen,
And I carried away on my breast
Your perfumes to breathe them.

Today, sky, temple, shore,
All have vanished without return:
Your perfume is in the cloud,
And I find, turning the page,
The dead trace of a beautiful day!

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-a-dried-flower-in-an-album-alphonse-de-lamartine/