Judgment (1)

Poem by Théodore Agrippa D'Aubigné Period 16th century

Children of vanity, who want everything polished,
who find the holy style not pretty enough,
who want everything smooth, and who flow, perishable,
into eternal oblivion, endure my words,
long and rough; and, since the holy oracles
do not move you, in the vain philosophers
you will still find, in hidden doctrine,
the resurrection preached by their writings.

They sang that when the blessed spirits
by the milky way have made new fires,
the great mover will, through his metamorphoses,
make the same bodies return at the return of their causes.
The air, which always takes on new bodies,
to house the latest puts the first outdoors;
fire, earth and water do the same.
The far-off departure of dead matter
makes its round and returns again to the same place,
and this turn always senses the presence of God.
Thus change will not be our end,
it changes us in ourselves and not into another,
it seeks its state, the end of its action:
it is in the second rest that perfection lies.
The elements, changing in their rules and kinds,
ceaselessly call back dead creatures
into new changes: the goal and the pleasure
is not there, for to change is a sign of desire.
But when the sky has completed the measure,
the circle of all its circles, the perfect figure,
when its encyclic course has completed its path
and its members united for the end of its turns,
nothing will be begotten: time, which consumes all,
will bring to man what was made for man;
then matter will have its rest, its pleasure,
the end of movement and the end of desire.

Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné

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-judgment-1-theodore-agrippa-d-aubigne/