Love Song (I)

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

Naples, 1822.

If you could ever equal, O my lyre,
The sweet trembling of the zephyr’s wings
Through the branches,
Or the wave that murmurs caressing these shores,
Or the cooing of plaintive doves,
Playing at the water’s edge;

If, like that reed animated by a happy breath,
Your strings exhaled that sublime language,
Divine secret of the heavens,
That, in the pure realm where only the spirit flies,
The amorous angels speak to each other without words,
Like eyes to eyes;

If from your sweet voice the flexible harmony,
Gently caressing a soul blossoming
In the breath of love,
Rocked it softly on vague images,
As the wind of heaven makes the clouds float
In the purple of the day:

While on the flowers my lover sleeps,
My voice would murmur very low in her ear
Sighs, chords,
As pure as the ecstasy into which her gaze plunges me,
As sweet as the sound that a dream brings us
From the ineffable shores!

Open your eyes, I would say, O my only light!
Let me, let me read in your eyelid
My life and your love!
Your languid gaze is dearer to my soul
Than the first ray of the celestial flame
To eyes deprived of day.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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