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Solitude! silence! oh! the desert tempts me.
The soul is appeased there, severely content;
There, by some unknown shadow, one feels oneself the illuminator.
I go into the forests to seek the vague horror;
The savage thickness of the branches procures for me
A sort of joy and obscure terror;
And I find there a forgetfulness almost equal to the tomb.
But I do not extinguish myself; one can remain a torch
In the shadow, and, under the sky, under the sacred crypt,
Alone, shiver in the deep wind of the empyrean.
Nothing is diminished in man for having
Cast the sounding line to the dark depths of duty.
Who sees from on high, sees well; who sees from afar, sees rightly.
The conscience knows that an august growth
Is possible for it, and goes to the high places
To shine and grow, far from the forgetful world.
So I go to the desert, but without leaving the world.
Because a dreamer comes, in the deep forest
Or on the escarpment of the cliffs, to sit
Tranquil and meditating the immensity of evening,
He does not isolate himself from the earth where we are.
Do you not feel, then, that having seen many men
One needs to flee under the thick trees,
And that all the thirsts for truth, for peace,
For equity, for reason and for light, increase
In the depths of a soul, after so many things that lie?
My brothers have always my whole heart, and, distant
But present, I watch and judge destiny;
I hold, to complete the sketched human soul,
The urn of pity bent over the peoples,
I empty it ceaselessly and I fill it always.
But I take for shelter the shadow of the great mute woods.
Oh! I have seen so closely the miserable crowds,
The cries, the clashes, the insult to venerable heads,
So many cowards grown great by civil troubles,
Judges who should have been judged, vile priests
Serving and soiling God, preaching for, proving against,
I have seen so much ugliness that our beauty shows,
In our good the evil, in our true the false,
And nothingness passing under our triumphal arches,
I have seen so much of what bites, what flees, what yields
That, old, weak and defeated, I have henceforth for joy
To dream motionless in some dark place;
There, bleeding, I meditate; and, even if a god
Offered me, to return to the cities, glory,
Youth, love, strength, victory,
I find it good to have a hole in the forests,
For I do not quite know if I would consent.
Victor Hugo
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-the-satisfied-exile-victor-hugo/