Français
Español
Italiano
Deutsch
Português
Oh! the evening hours beneath these light climes,
The light there is beautiful and the moon is gentle,
And the supple, bright shadow spreads over the moss
The shifting patterns of an alien foliage.
Olive trees of Aragon, fig trees of Catalonia,
Calm white hamlets on your leaning streams,
Last rays grazing the roofs and the bell towers
Where the folded flight of the storks would halt;
Songs of muleteers or of ruddy taverns,
And you, women, whose gait was haughty,
When you climbed, the jar at your hip, toward the fountains,
How many times my memory has flowed back toward you!
But I was born, over there, in the mists of Flanders,
In a little village where tarred walls
Shelter poor but obstinate sailors,
Under skies of hurricane, of smoke and of ash.
The black marshes, the dreary woods, and the bare fields,
And grayish November and its hair of rain,
And the ink-colored dawns and the soot-colored sunsets,
My brief childhood, alas! has known them all too well.
Always the enormous Scheldt rolled through my thought.
In winter, when its ice floes where the stars were mirrored
Cracked and carried their blocks toward disasters,
I was happy and strong with an anguished joy.
In summer, the heavy boats that pierced the distances
Vibrated less in their masts where emblems floated,
Than my exalted heart vibrated within me
For some intense struggle and some great destiny.
The shifting mists and the flying clouds,
With their powerful gestures thus baptized me
And my whole body organized itself, as it were,
To live ardent, beneath their tumult and their storms.
O you, lands of gold and gentle splendor!
If your woods, your valleys, your plains and your shores
Still sometimes tempt my desires and my dreams,
It is Flanders, yet, that holds all my heart.
The love with which I burned was conceived for its women;
Its hostile and violent sky alone endowed me
With mute resistance and fierce will
And with the rough pride of which my soul is made.
My whole country lives and thinks in my body;
It absorbs my strength into its deep strength,
So that through it I may better feel the world
And celebrate the earth with a stronger song.
Emile Verhaeren
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-epilogue-emile-verhaeren/