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When the Creator’s life-giving word,
In a fateful hour, had brought forth the world
From the seeds of chaos,
He turned his face from his unfinished work,
And with a disdainful foot casting it into space,
Returned to his rest.
Go, he said, I deliver you to your own misery;
Too unworthy in my eyes of love or wrath,
You are nothing before me.
Roll at the whim of chance in the deserts of the void;
May destiny forever be your guide far from me,
And Misfortune your king.
He spoke. Like a vulture swooping on its prey,
Misfortune, at these words, utters, as a sign of joy,
A long groan;
And pressing the universe in its cruel talons,
Embraces forever with its eternal rage
Its eternal food.
Evil from then on reigned in its immense empire;
From then on all that thinks and all that breathes
Began to suffer;
And earth, and heaven, and soul, and matter,
All groaned: and the voice of all nature
Was but one long sigh.
Lift then your eyes to the celestial plains,
Seek God in his work, invoke in your sorrows
That great comforter,
Wretched ones! his goodness is absent from his work,
You seek your support? the universe presents to you
Your persecutor.
By what name shall we name you, O fatal power?
Let us call you destiny, nature, providence,
Inconceivable law!
Let us tremble beneath your hand, or blaspheme it,
Submissive or rebellious, whether we fear or love you,
Always, it is always you!
Alas! like you I invoked hope;
My deluded mind drank with complacency
Its poisonous philter;
It is she who, pushing our steps into the abyss,
Crowns with garlands and flowers the victims
She delivers to Misfortune.
If at least it decimated men at random,
Or if its hand fell on all of us
With equal laws?
But the centuries have seen magnanimous souls,
Beauty, genius, or sublime virtues,
Victims of its choice.
So, when gods of blood demanded in sacrifice
From innocent flocks the bloody first-fruits,
In their cruel temples,
From a hundred chosen bulls the hecatomb was formed,
And the spotless lamb, or the white dove
Fattened their altars.
Creator, Almighty, principle of all being!
You for whom the possible exists before being born:
King of immensity,
You could nevertheless, at the whim of your desire,
Draw for your children happiness and life
From your eternity?
Without ever exhausting yourself, over all nature
You could in long streams pour without measure
An absolute happiness.
Space, power, time, nothing costs you.
Ah! my reason shudders; you could without doubt,
You did not will it.
What crime have we committed to deserve to be born?
Did insensible nothingness ask you for being,
Or did it accept it?
Are we, O chance, the work of your caprices?
Or rather, cruel God, were our torments needed
For your felicity?
Rise then toward the sky, rise, incense that he loves,
Sighs, groans, tears, sobs, blasphemy,
Pleasures, divine concerts!
Cries of blood, voice of the dead, inextinguishable laments,
Rise, go strike the insensible vaults
Of the palace of destinies!
Earth, raise your voice; heavens, answer; abysses,
Black dwellings where death piles up its victims,
Form but one sigh.
Let an eternal complaint accuse nature,
And may sorrow give to every creature
A voice to groan.
From the day when nature, torn from nothingness,
Escaped from your hands like a sketch begun,
What did you see, however?
To the disorders of evil matter enslaved,
All flesh groaning, alas! and all life
Jealous of nothingness.
Rival elements’ intestine struggles;
Time, which withers all, seated on the ruins
That its hands piled up,
Waiting on the threshold for your ephemeral works;
And death stifling, from the breast of their mothers,
The germs of humans!
Virtue succumbing under unpunished audacity,
Imposture honored, truth banished;
Errant liberty
Offered as sacrifice to the living gods of the world;
And force, everywhere, founding of injustice
The unlimited reign.
Valor without the gods deciding battles!
A Cato still free tearing out his entrails
In the faith of Plato!
A Brutus who, dying for the virtue he loves,
Doubts at the last moment of that virtue itself,
And says: You are but a name!…
Fortune always on the side of great crimes!
Forfaits crowned become legitimate!
Glory at the price of blood!
Children inheriting the iniquity of fathers!
And the century that dies recounting its miseries
To the reborn century!
What! so many torments, forfaits, tortures,
Have they not made smoke with enough sacrifices
Your lugubrious altars?
This sun, old witness of the misfortunes of the earth,
Will it not make a single day rise that does not illuminate
The anguish of mortals?
Heirs of sorrows, victims of life,
No, no, do not hope that its sated rage
Will lull Misfortune to sleep!
Until Death, opening its immense wing,
Swallows forever in eternal silence
Eternal sorrow!
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-le-desespoir-alphonse-de-lamartine/