Habit, Poem by Auguste Angellier

Poem by Auguste Angellier Collection The Path of SeasonsPeriod 20th century

To Léon Chailley.

Tranquil Habit with silent hands
Dresses, day by day, our greatest wounds;
It places on our hearts its sure bandages
And pours endlessly its forgetful oils;

The noblest sorrows, which would wish to defend themselves,
Desirous of lasting for the love they contain,
Feel the dear and cherished need they speak of
Becoming, in spite of themselves, less fierce and more tender;

And, every day, the sleep-inducing and gentle hands,
The insensible hands of slow Habit,
Tighten a little more the strange quietude
Where the drowsy pain submits and dulls;

And with the same touch with which it lulls sorrow,
With the same delicate caress that passes
Always, it dulls, it extinguishes, it erases,
Like a reflection, in a mirror, under a breath,

The gestures, the smile and even the face
Whose presence was divine and deadly;
They pale, covered with a fine dust;
The source of regrets becomes veiled and wan.

Each hour soothing the softened suffering,
Taking from their brilliance lost delights,
It thus draws near with its assiduous hands
The past to the present, and reconciles them;

Pain diminishes for lesser delights;
The softened and calm wound closes;
And the high despairs, which wanted to be endless,
Feel themselves slowly changed into scars;

And he who cherishes his dark unrest,
Who would shed tears over his dissolved sorrow,
More than all torments and cries dreads you,
Silent hands of slow Habit.

Auguste Angellier

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

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