Farewell to Graziella

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

Farewell! word that a tear moistens on the lip;
Word that ends joy and cuts love short;
Word by which departure weans us from delights;
Word that eternity must one day erase!

Farewell!… I have often spoken you in my life,
Without understanding, in leaving the beings I loved,
What you contained of sadness and of dregs,
When man says: “Return!” and God says: “Never!”

But today I feel that my mouth pronounces
The word that contains all, since it is full of you,
That falls into the abyss, and that has for answer
Only the eternal silence between an image and me!

And yet my heart repeats with every breath
This word that a muffled sob interrupts in the middle,
As if all the sounds with which nature is full
Had for their only meaning, alas! a great farewell!

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-farewell-to-graziella-alphonse-de-lamartine/