The Night, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

Since evening fell upon the immense plain,
With heavy hammers and taciturn blocks,
The shadow builds its walls and its nocturnal dungeons
Like an Escurial clad in black silver.

The prodigious sky reigns, ablaze with stars,
– A vault of ebony and gold where eyes swarm –
And there rise, in one thrust, toward that ceiling of fires,
The beeches and the pines, like pilasters.

Like white shrouds lit by torches,
The lakes shine, struck by stellar lights,
The fields, they are cut into quadrangular enclosures,
And mirror themselves, like enormous tombs.

And thus, with its corners and its funereal halls,
Entirely built in mystery, in terror,
The night appears the black palace of an emperor
Leaning somewhere, far off, in the darkness.

Emile Verhaeren

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

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