Habit, Poem by Auguste Angellier

Poem by Auguste Angellier Period 19th century

The tranquil habit with its silent hands
Dresses, from day to day, our greatest wounds;
It lays upon our hearts its sure bandages
And pours on them endlessly its forgetful oils;

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

And, every day, the lulling and gentle hands,
The insensible hands of slow Habit,
Tighten a little more the strange quietude
Where the drowsy evil submits and grows dull;

And with the same touch by which it lulls pain to sleep,
With the same delicate brushing that passes
Ever again, it dims, it extinguishes, it erases,
Like a reflection, in a mirror, beneath a breath,

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

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

Pain diminishes for lesser delights;
The soothed and calm wound closes again;
And the lofty despairs, which wished themselves 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 fears you,
Silent hands of slow Habit

Auguste Angellier

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-habit-auguste-angellier-2/