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Here the last sounds of the world come to die.
Sailors without a star, land! this is the port:
Here the soul plunges into a profound peace,
And this peace is not death.
Here the sky is never stormy or dark;
An even and pure day rests the eyes.
It is that living sun, of which the sun is the shadow,
That spreads it from the heights of the heavens.
Like a man awake long before dawn,
Young, we fled into this happy dwelling.
Our dream is finished, yours still lasts;
Awake! behold the day.
Tender hearts, draw near! Here one still loves;
But love, purified, kindles on the altar.
All that is human in it evaporates in this fire;
All that remains is immortal!
The prayer that watches in these holy dwellings
Announces to us the course of the morning star;
And, guiding for us the pious chariot of the hours,
Fills and measures our days.
The religious bronze awakens with the dawn.;
It mingles our homage with the voice of the zephyrs,
And the airs, shaken beneath the sonorous hammer,
Take on the accent of our sighs.
In the hollow of the rock, beneath an obscure vault,
Rises a simple altar: king of heaven, is it you?
Yes, constrained by love, the God of nature
Descends there, visible to faith.
Let my reason be silent, and let my heart adore!
The cross reveals to my gaze a new day;
At the feet of a dying God, can I still doubt?
No, love explains love to me!
All these prostrate brows, this fire that embraces them,
These perfumes, these sighs exhaling from the holy place,
These inflamed impulses, these tears of ecstasy,
Everything answers me that it is a God.
Favorites of the Lord, allow that, following your example,
Like a beggar at the gates of a palace,
I too adore from afar, on the threshold of his temple,
The God who gives you peace.
Ah! let me mingle my hymn with your praises!
May my soiled incense rise with your incense.
Once the sons of man to the holy concerts of angels
Did they not mingle their accents!
From the number of the living each dawn erases me,
I am filled with days, with sorrows, with remorse.
Under the obscure portico come mark my place,
Here, near the dwelling of the dead!
Allow a stranger to watch beside their ashes,
Burning on a coffin like these holy torches;
Death has ravished everything from me, death must restore everything to me;
I await the awakening of the tombs!
Ah! might I near them, at the whim of my desire,
In the shadow of the altar, and not far from this port,
Alone, thus finish the remains of my life
Between hope and death!
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-holy-week-at-la-rocheguyon-alphonse-de-lamartine/