Jocelyn, September 16, 1793

Poem by Alphonse De Lamartine Period 19th century

My heart had told me so: every soul is sister to a soul;
God created them in pairs and made them man or woman;
The world may in vain separate them for a time,
Their destiny sooner or later is to meet;
And when these sisters of heaven here below meet,
Invincible instincts show each one to the other;
Each soul by its own force draws its other half,
This meeting is love or friendship,
One and the same union that a different word names,
According to the being and the sex in whom God consummates it,
But which is only the lightning flash that reveals to each
The being that completes him, and of two makes but one.

When it has shone, the fire of heaven is less swift,
The eye seeks nothing more, the soul has no more void,
By infallible instinct the heart suddenly struck,
Does not fear return, nor having been mistaken,
One is full of an attraction one has not felt being born,
Before speaking to each other one believes one recognizes the other,
For all the days gone by one has no more a glance,
One regrets, one laments having seen each other too late,
One is in accord on everything before answering,
The soul more and more aspires to be merged;
It is the ray of Heaven, by the water reflected,
That rises back to the ray to double its brightness;
It is the sound that returns from the echo that repeats,
Second and same voice, to the voice that throws it;
It is the shadow that with us the sun sees walking,
Sister of the body, that from our steps one cannot tear away.

From the Grotto, September 16, 1793.

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-jocelyn-september-16-1793-alphonse-de-lamartine/