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DITHYRAMB.
To M. Eugène de Genoude.
Her brow is crowned with palms and stars;
Her immortal gaze, which nothing can tarnish,
Traversing all times, lifting all veils,
Awakens the past, plunges into the future!
Before her eyes the world’s pageants unfold,
The centuries at her feet flow like a torrent;
At her will descending or ascending their courses,
She sounds for the tombs the hour, the fatal hour,
Or on her virginal lyre
Sings to the aged world this day, father of days!
——
Listen! – Jehovah springs forth
From the bosom of his eternity.
Sleeping chaos awakens in his presence,
His virtue fecundates it, and his omnipotence
Rests upon immensity!
God said, and the day was; God said, and the stars
Cleared the veils of eternal night;
All the diverse elements
At his voice separated;
The waters suddenly flowed
Into the hollowed bed of the seas;
The mountains rose,
And the north winds flew
Through the free fields of the air!
Seven times Jehovah’s fecund word
Made itself heard to the world,
And seven times nothingness answered his voice;
And God said: Let us make man in my living image.
He spoke, man was born; at this last work
The creative Word stops and applauds itself!
——
But this is no longer a God! – It is man who sighs.
Eden has fled!… behold labor and death!
In tears his voice expires;
The chord of happiness breaks on his lyre,
And Job draws from it a sound as sad as fate.
——
Ah! may the day that saw me born perish forever!
Ah! may the night that conceived me perish forever!
And the breast that gave me being,
And the knees that received me!
May God blot it forever from the number of days;
May, always darkened by the shadows of death,
That day among the days no longer find its place,
May it be as if it were not!
Now in oblivion I would still sleep,
And I would finish my slumber
In that long night that will have no dawn,
With those conquerors whom the earth devours,
With the conceived fruit that dies before blooming
And that has not seen the sun.
My days decline like the shadow;
I would hasten them.
O my God! cut short the number
Of suns I must count!
The sight of my long misfortune
Drives away, repels, importunes
My brothers weary of my ills;
In vain I address their crowd,
Their pity escapes me and flows away
Like water on the flank of the hills.
Like a passing cloud,
My spring has vanished;
My eyes will no longer see the trace
Of all those goods I have enjoyed.
By the breath of wrath,
Alas! torn from the earth,
I go whence one does not return!
My valleys, my own dwelling,
And that eye itself that weeps for me,
Will never see my steps again!
Man lives a day on earth
Between death and sorrow;
Sated with his misery,
He falls at last like the flower;
He falls! At least by the dew
Of flowers the watered root
Can it for a moment bloom again!
But man, alas!, after life,
Is a lake whose water has fled:
One seeks it, it has just dried up.
My days melt like snow
At the breath of divine wrath;
My hope, which he shortens,
Flees like water from my hand;
Open my last asylum;
There, I have in the shadow a tranquil bed,
A bed prepared for my sorrows!
O tomb! you are my father!
And I say to the worms of the earth:
You are my mother and my sisters!
But the happy days of the impious
Do not vanish at morning;
Tranquil, he prolongs his life
With the blood of the orphan!
He extends his roots far;
Like a flock on the hills,
His family covers Segor;
Then in a rich mausoleum
He is laid in the valley,
And one would say he still lives.
It is God’s secret, I keep silent and adore it!
It is his hand that traced the paths of dawn,
That weighed the Ocean, that suspended the heavens!
For him, the abyss is bare, hell itself is without veils!
He founded the earth and sowed the stars!
And who am I in his eyes?
——
But the harp trembled under Isaiah’s fingers;
From his boiling breast the threat in long waves
Escapes; a God calls him, he springs up, he cries:
Heavens and earth, listen! silence to the son of Amos!
——
Uzziah was no more: God appeared to me; I saw
Adonai clothed in glory and dread!
The dazzling edges of his flowing robe
Filled the sacred court!
Seraphim standing on ivory steps
Veiled themselves before him with six wings of fire;
Flying from one to another, they said among themselves:
Holy, holy, holy, the Lord, the God, the king of gods!
All the earth is full of his glory!
At these accents the vault of the temple shook,
Adonai fled beneath the flaming cloud:
The holy place was filled with torrents of smoke.
The earth trembled under my feet!
And I! I would remain in cowardly silence!
I who have seen you, Lord, I would not dare to speak!
To this impure people who offend you
I would fear to reveal you!
Who will walk for us? says the God of armies.
Who will speak for me? says God: Who? I, Lord!
Touch my burning lips!
Here I am! I am ready!… woe!
Woe to you who from dawn
Breathe the perfumes of wine!
And whom evening finds still
Staggering at the edges of the feast!
Woe to you who by usury
Extend without end or measure
The immense boundary of your fields!
Do you then, greedy mortals,
Wish to dwell in your arid fields,
Alone, on the earth of the living?
Woe to you, senseless race!
Children of an audacious century,
Who say in your thought:
We are wise in our own eyes:
You change my night into light,
And the day into coarse shadow
Where your pleasures hide!
But, like a bull in the plain,
You drag after you the chain
Of your long iniquities!
Woe to you, daughters of the wave!
Isles of Sidon and Tyre!
Tyrants! who traffic in the world
With the purple and gold of Ophir!
Woe to you! your hour sounds!
In vain the Ocean crowns you,
Woe to you, queen of the waters,
To you who, on new seas,
Make resound like wings
The sails of a thousand vessels!
The days of my justice have come at last;
My wrath, says God, overflows upon you!
No more incense, no more sacrifice
That can extinguish my anger!
I will deliver this people to death, to carnage;
The sword will harvest like wild grass
Its entire battalions!
– Lord! spare us! Lord! – No, no truce,
And I will make drip upon it from my blade
The blood of its warriors!
Its torrents will dry under my burning breath;
My hand will level, like a vast plain,
Its walls and its palaces;
Fire will burn them as it burns the stubble.
There, no more nation, city, kingdom;
Silence forever!
Its walls will cover themselves with brambles and thorns;
The hyena and the serpent will people its ruins;
The owls, the vultures,
Calling one another during the dark night,
Will come to their little ones to bring food
At the summit of its towers!
——
But God closes at these words the lips of Isaiah;
The somber Ezekiel
On the dried trunk of ungrateful Israel
Makes in turn the word of life descend.
——
The Eternal carried my spirit to the desert:
The ground was covered with dried bones;
I approach trembling; but Jehovah cries to me:
If I speak to these bones, will they take up life again?
– Eternal, you know it! – Well then! says the Lord,
Listen to my accents! retain them and say to them:
Dried bones! insensible dust!
Rise up! receive the spirit and the light!
May your scattered members assemble at my voice!
May the spirit animate you a second time!
May your muscles be replaced between your withered bones!
May your blood circulate and your nerves intertwine!
Rise up and live, and see who I am!
I listened to the Lord, I obeyed and I said:
Spirits, blow upon them from the west, from the dawn;
Blow from the north, blow!… Pressed to hatch,
These remains of the tomb, awakened by my cries,
Suddenly clash their withered bones;
At the light of the sun their eyelids reopen,
Their bones are gathered, and flesh covers them!
And this whole field of death arose,
Became again a great people, and knew Jehovah!
——
But God has lost the memory of his children;
The daughter of Zion, pondering her misfortunes,
Sits down sighing, and, widowed of her glory,
Listens to Jeremiah, and finds tears again.
——
The Lord, overwhelming me with the weight of his wrath,
Withdraws and brings back his hand in turn;
You who pass by the way,
Is there a misery equal to my misery?
In vain my voice rises, he no longer hears my voice;
He has chosen me as the target of his flaming arrows,
And all day against my soul
His fury has launched the sons of his quiver!
On my consumed bones my skin has dried;
The children have sung of me in their mockeries;
Alone, in the midst of the nations,
The Lord has cast me like a plucked herb.
He has wrapped himself in his divine wrath;
He has closed my road, he has troubled my way;
My breast has no longer known joy,
And I said to the Lord: Lord, remember,
Remember, Lord, those days of wrath;
Remember the gall with which you have fed me;
No, your love is not dried up:
You strike me, Lord, and that is why I hope.
I go over weeping those miserable days;
I have known the Lord from my tenderest dawn:
When he punishes, he still loves;
He has not, my soul, departed forever.
Happy who knows him! happy who from childhood
Bore the yoke of a God, clement in his rigor!
He believes in the salvation of the Lord,
Sits at the river’s edge and awaits it in silence.
He feels weighing on him this yoke of your love;
He pours out in the night his tears and his prayer,
And his mouth in the dust,
He invokes, he hopes, he awaits your day.
——
Silence, O lyre! and you silence,
Prophets, voice of the future!
All the universe is silent in advance
Before the one who must come!
Close, inspired lips;
Rest, sacred harps,
Until the day when on the high places
A voice unknown to the world,
Will make resound in the clouds:
PEACE ON EARTH, AND GLORY IN THE HEAVENS!
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-sacred-poetry-alphonse-de-lamartine/