The West

Poem by Alphonse De Lamartine Collection Harmonies poétiques et religieusesPeriod 19th century

… And the star that was falling from cloud to cloud,
Hung on the waves its orb without a ray,
Then plunged half of its bleeding image,
Like a ship on fire that sinks at the horizon;

And half the sky grew pale, and the breeze
Fainted in the sail, motionless and voiceless,
And the shadows ran, and beneath their gray tint
Everything on sky and water faded at once;

And in my soul too, fading in measure,
All the sounds of this world fell with the day,
And something within me, as in nature,
Wept, prayed, suffered, blessed in turn! …

O light! where are you going? Globe exhausted of flame,
Clouds, north winds, waves, where are you running?
Dust, foam, night; you, my eyes; you, my soul,
Tell me, if you know, where then are we all going?

To you, great All, whose star is the pale spark,
In whom night, day, spirit come to end!
Divine flux and reflux of universal life,
Vast ocean of Being where everything goes to be swallowed up!

Alphonse de Lamartine

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

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