The Night, Poem by Alfred de Musset

When the white moon
Clings to the branch
To see
If some red fire
On the horizon stirs
At evening,

Mad then is he who gives
To the night his book
Of learning,
His foot to the hills,
And his mandolins
To the wind;

Mad who tells a tale,
For midnight that counts
The time,
Passes with the prince
Of sabbats who gnashes
His teeth.

The lover who compares
Some rare beauty
To the day,
Draws a ballad
From his heart sick
With love.

But behold in the shadow
A dark round dance
Forms,
Hell dances around,
All in a silence
Perfect.

Every hanged man of Grève,
Every dead Jew lifts
His brow,
All drowned from the harbors
Press their corpses
In a ring.

And the departed souls
Join their blue hands
Boneless;
He tranquil sings
In a touching voice
His woes.

But when his harp,
Where a scarf floats,
Falls silent,
He wants to flee… The dance
Surrounds him in silence
Perfect.

The circle embraces him,
His foot entwines
With the dead,
His head breaks
On the gray earth!
Then

The contented round,
Bursting with laughter,
Takes him;
Every dead man without rancor
Finds in the moonlight
His place.

For the white moon
Clings to the branch
To see
If some red fire
On the horizon stirs
At evening.

Alfred De Musset

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-the-night-alfred-de-musset/