In pejus ruit., Poem by Auguste Angellier

Poem by Auguste Angellier Collection The Path of SeasonsThemes Death, SadnessPeriod 20th century

To Lucien Marcheix.

I bear sorrows older than myself,
My heart is burdened with inherited griefs,
And I sometimes feel my brow turn pale
With remorse that I know I have not deserved;

The anguish, the regrets, the flaws, the weaknesses
Of those from whom we come roll through us,
To pass on, increased by our own distress,
Through the hearts of children cradled on our knees;

A river more laden with shames and alarms
Descends, carrying in its erosions
New infamies and new tears,
And swells across the generations;

Until, ever dragging more misery,
It carries, in its ever more unwholesome waves,
A poison so powerful of hereditary evil,
That it kills, in passing, the last human hearts;

And until, finally exhausting in strange beings
Its wave of bitterness in a last effort,
It goes to deposit its silts and its mires
In the immense and dreary estuary of Death.

Auguste Angellier

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

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