Complaint, Poem by Charles Cros

Poem by Charles Cros Collection The Sandalwood CasketPeriod 19th century

True savage astray in the city of stone,
In the glow of the gaslight I wither and die.
But you take delight in it, and your charming eyes
Draw me toward death, proud Parisian woman.

I dream of spending my life in some corner
Under green woods or on aromatic mountains,
In the Orient, or near the pole, far away,
Far from newspapers, from the crowd and the shops.

But you love the crowd and the bursts of voices,
The Opéra ball, the gaslight and the advertisements.
As for me, seeing you, I forget the rocks and the woods,
I kill myself trying to civilize my soul.

I grow weary of telling you so often:
I shall die, a burned butterfly, if this goes on…
Yet you would do well, your black hair in the wind,
In a light ruffled dressing gown, against a background of greenery.

Charles Cros

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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