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It was a gentle land lit up with plains
Where long flocks moved about,
Whose wool one saw
Whiten the meadows and mirror itself in the water;
There were fields of flowers stretching to infinity:
A river wound from cottage to cottage;
Its course made, in the distance, a gesture of light;
There were lakes, ringed with rushes; like great nests,
Where the birds fell asleep in silence,
Where only a very slow wind of peace and clemency
Stirred the peaceful air around a golden islet.
It was the hour of evening and of calm waves
When the smooth and pure echo doubles, from shore to shore,
The voices of the water-crossers on their native banks.
The villages mused at the end of the avenues.
Persuasive and welcome,
The good wills to love and to live well
Dilated the being – and the spirit seemed drunk
With either tender joy or proud sorrow.
A bit of the gold of evenings penetrated the flowers
That closed to fall asleep;
One watched, along the great roads, quiver
From top to bottom, the nocturnal poplars;
The flight of the angelus hovered over things;
A new sense of the world, softly, fell
From the urns
That the infinite and mystery
Have tilted, for thousands of years,
Toward the taut and panting desires
And the ecstasies of the earth.
Pure, cut in crystal,
The first awakened stars
Appeared, one by one, on the horizon.
The tranquil dew silvered the grass;
A melancholic and fresh goodness
Came from things toward the heart;
All clarity, like arrows,
Aimed its force into the depths;
In the blue distances of calm and prayer,
The leaning shadow married the light;
Joined hands seemed to rise from the earth
And to climb always and exalt themselves,
And such was the ardor of benevolence
That pierced you, that it burst into violence
And went off, higher than forgiveness itself,
To dart, toward that extreme desire
To be suddenly the dupe or else the prey
Of an injustice – and to weep for joy over it.
One wished
To strip oneself of all pride;
One wished
To be the one who welcomes
Sacrifice – and who keeps silent;
One wished,
To unite confusedly with all that trembled,
On that pure and translucent evening
Like glimmers of gold in the stained glass of an apse.
One wished at last
To melt and sink into these clear trials,
Happiness one leaves, anguish one wants, sorrow one conquers,
And to live, in their intimate and willed tumult,
Like a martyr or like a saint.
The cottages, down there, slept along the roads;
The flowers and the colors were all fading;
But the smooth and pure echo still doubled, doubled again,
From shore to shore,
At that hour of calm and of calm waves,
The voices of the water-crossers of the native rivers.
Emile Verhaeren
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-clemency-emile-verhaeren/