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It was a pretty brunette
Spinning in the moonlight,
Who let fall her spindle
On the edge of a fountain,
But running after her wool
Plunged her head into the water,
And the poor girl drowned
For to her too-feeble voice
No one sensed her disaster,
Then far enough away her companions
Among the green fields
Were guarding their small flock.
Ah! too cruel adventure!
Ah! too proud and too harsh death!
And too cruel the torch
Sacred for her marriage,
Which awaiting her, led her
Instead of the bed, to the tomb.
And you, fountain nymphs
Too ungrateful and too proud,
Who did not come to the rescue
Of this young shepherdess,
Who playing the housewife
Drowned the thread of her days.
But in good remembrance
Of the dainty shepherdess,
Moved by pity, the gods
Into these whitening stones
Of ever-flowing tears
Change the enamel of her eyes.
No longer eyes, but two fountains,
Whose source and whose veins
Spring from the depths of the heart;
No longer heart, but a rock
That laments the reproach
Of Love and its harshness.
Stone forever weeping,
In small waves undulating,
Sure witnesses of her sorrows;
Like the marble on Sipylus
That melts and distills itself
Drop by drop in hot tears.
O thing too admirable,
Thing truly unbelievable,
To see rolling over its edges
A living water that streams,
And with eternal course,
Go bathing this little body!
And for the course of this wave
The stone is no less fertile
Nor less large, and aging
Its weight does not alter:
But always remains whole
As it was at birth.
But is it that by nature
For its rare texture
It attracts the neighboring air,
Or within itself conceals
This humor that it amasses
To make of it a storehouse?
It is of perfect roundness,
Of a color white and clear
Pleasant and beautiful to see,
Full of humor that tosses
Within, as floats
The white in the egg when moved.
Go, weeping one, and remember
The blood of my wound
That flows and flows without end,
And the complaints poured out
That I send into the clouds
To soften my fate.
Rémy Belleau
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-watery-stone-remy-belleau/