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(To an exiled poet)
Generous favorites of the daughters of memory,
Two different paths before you will open:
One leads to happiness, the other leads to glory;
Mortals, you must choose.
Your fate, O Manoel, followed the common law;
The muse intoxicated you with precocious favors;
Your days were woven of glory and misfortune,
And you shed tears!
Blush rather, blush to envy the vulgar
The sterile rest of which his heart is jealous
The gods have made for him all the goods of the earth,
But the lyre is ours.
The centuries are yours, the world is your homeland.
When we are no more, our shadow has altars
Where just future prepares for your genius
Immortal honors.
Thus the superb eagle to the dwelling of thunder
Springs forth; and, sustaining its audacious flight,
Seems to say to mortals: I was born on the earth,
But I live in the heavens.
Yes, glory awaits you; but stop, and contemplate
At what price one enters its sacred courts;
See: misfortune, seated at the door of the temple,
Guards the steps.
Here, it is that old man whom ungrateful Ionia
Has seen from sea to sea dragging his misfortunes:
Blind, he begged at the price of his genius
A bread soaked in tears.
There, Tasso, burned by a fatal flame,
Expiating in chains his glory and his love,
When he goes to gather the triumphal palm,
Descends to the dark abode.
Everywhere the unhappy, the proscribed, the victims,
Struggling against fate or against executioners;
One would say that heaven to hearts more magnanimous
Measures out more evils.
Impose silence therefore on the complaints of your lyre,
Of hearts born without virtue misfortune is the stumbling block;
But you, dethroned king, may your misfortune inspire you
A generous pride!
What does it matter after all that this barbarous order
Enchains you far from the shores that were your cradle?
What does it matter in what places destiny prepares for you
A glorious tomb?
Neither exile, nor the chains of these tyrants of the Tagus
Will chain your glory to the shores where you will die:
Lisbon claims it, and there is the heritage
That you will leave to it!
Those who have misunderstood him will weep for the great man;
Athens opens its Pantheon to the proscribed;
Coriolanus expires, and the children of Rome
Reclaim his name.
To the shores of the dead before descending,
Ovid raises to heaven his suppliant hands:
To the crude Sarmatians he bequeathed his ashes,
And his glory to the Romans.
Alphonse de Lamartine
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-glory-alphonse-de-lamartine/