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Why dost thou groan without cease,
O my soul? Answer me!
Whence comes this weight of sadness
That weighs upon thee today?
To the tomb that devours us,
Weeping, thou hast not yet
Led thy last friends!
The serene star of thy life
Rises still; and envy
Seeks why thou groanest!
The earth still has shores,
The sky still has days,
Glory still has storms,
The heart still has loves;
Nature offers to thy vigils
Mysteries, wonders,
That no eye has profaned,
And withering all in advance
In the fields of hope
Thy hand has not gleaned all!
And what is the earth? A floating prison,
A narrow dwelling, a ship, a tent
That its God in space has pitched for a day,
And whose wind of heaven in three steps makes the round!
Plains, valleys, seas and hills
Where all comes from dust and returns to ruins,
And whose mass is scarcely to immensity
What the hour that strikes is to eternity!
Mud kneaded into palaces, alas! but always mud,
Where all is monotonous and yet all changes!
And what is life? An awakening of a moment!
To be born and to die a brief astonishment!
A word that the eternal Being pronounces with contempt!
Labyrinth without a key! Question without an answer,
Dream that evaporates, spark that flees!
Lightning that comes from shadow and returns to night,
Minute that time lends and withdraws from man,
Thing that is not worth the word by which it is named!
And what is glory? A vain repeated sound,
A derision of our vanity!
A name that resounds on mortal lips,
Vain, deceitful, inconstant, perishable like them,
And which, now growing and now fading,
Passes from mouth to mouth to eternal oblivion!
Poisoned nectar with which our pride gets drunk,
That makes die twice what wants always to live!
And what is love? Ah! ready to name it
My mouth in denying it would fear to blaspheme!
It alone is above every word that expresses it!
Brilliant and pure lightning of the fire that animates us,
Spark ravished from the great hearth of the heavens!
Chariot of fire that, living, bears us to the rank of gods!
Ray! thunderbolt of the senses! inextinguishable flame
That melts two mortal hearts and makes of them but one soul!
It is!… it would be all, if it did not have to end!
If the heart of a mortal could contain it,
Or if, like the fire of which God made his emblem,
Its flame in exhaling did not stifle itself!
But, when these goods that man envies
Would overflow in a single heart,
Death alone at the end of life
Makes a torture of happiness!
The flood of time that carries us away
Does not wait for human joy
To flourish long upon its course!
Ephemeral and fugitive race,
What canst thou sow on the shore
Of this torrent that always flees?
It flees and its faded shores
Already announce to me that it is late!
It flees, and my green years
Disappear from my sight;
Each project, each hope
Resembles that cork one throws
On the track of the sailors,
Which only moves away and floats
Only to measure the wake
Of the ship that cleaves the waves!
Where am I? Is it I? I awake
From a dream that is not finished!
All was promise and wonder
In an infinite future!
I was young!… Alas! my years
Fall faded on my head
And will never bloom again!
My heart was full!… it is empty!
My breast fertile… it is arid!
I loved!… where are those I loved?
My days, which mourning discolors,
Glide before being counted;
My heart, alas! still palpitates
With its last pleasures!
Under my steps the earth is covered
With more than one still green palm,
But which survives my desires;
So many objects dear to my eyelid
Are still there, on the dust
Warm from my burning sighs!
I see pass, I see smile
The woman with perfidious charms
Who intoxicated me with a long delirium,
Whose steps my lips kissed!
Her blond hair still floats,
The fresh colors of dawn
Still tint her charming brow,
And in the azure of her eyelid
Still shines enough light
To fascinate the eye of a lover.
The crowd that opens as she goes
Still flatters her with a long glance
And pursues her with a sweet murmur
With which her young pride gets drunk;
And I! I smile and I pass,
Without effort from my heart I efface
This dream of felicity,
And I say, with pity in my soul:
Love! can it be that thy flame
Dies even before beauty?
Alas! in a long life
What remains after love?
In our dazzled eyelid
What remains after a beautiful day!
What remains to the empty sail
When the last wind that ripples it
Falls on the sleepy wave,
What remains to the wild stubble,
When the wings of the storm
On the earth have emptied the ear!
And yet one must still live,
Sleep, wake in turn,
And drag from dawn to dawn
This reborn burden of days?
When one has drunk to the dregs
The foaming cup of life,
Ah! to break it would be a good!
To hope, to wait, is to live!
What use is it to count and follow
Days that bring nothing more?
That is why my soul is weary
Of the frightful void that fills it,
Why my heart changes place
Like a sick man in his bed!
Why my wandering thought,
Like a wounded dove,
Rests in no place,
Why I have turned my view
From this ungrateful and bare earth,
And I said at last: My God!
Like a breath of a storm wind
Lifting the humble sparrow
Carries it above the cloud,
Far from the roof that was its cradle,
Without even its wing trembling,
The north wind sustains it; it seems
Lulled on the waves of the air;
Thus this single thought
Carried my oppressed soul
Up to the source of lightnings!
It is God, I thought, who carries me,
The infinite opens under my steps!
How strong my nascent wing is!
What skies shall we not attempt?
Faith itself, one foot on the earth,
Mounts from mystery to mystery
Up to where one mounts without dying!
I shall go, full of its sublime thirst,
To quench myself in the abyss
That I shall see no more dry up!
I have sought the God I adore
Everywhere instinct has led me,
Under the golden veils of dawn,
Among the stars of night;
The firmament has no vaults,
The fires, the winds have no routes
Where my eye has not plunged a hundred times;
Always present to my memory,
Everywhere his glory showed itself,
He heard my voice rise!
I have sought him in wonders,
Speaking work of his hands,
In solitude and vigils,
And in the dreams of humans!
The ear, the blade of grass, the insect,
Said to me: Adore and respect!
His wisdom has passed that way!
And these fatal catastrophes,
With which history swells its annals
Cried to me louder: There he is!
At each flash, at each star
That I discovered in the heavens,
I believed I saw fall the veil
That hid him from my eyes;
I said: One mystery more!
Here is his shadow, his dawn,
My soul! he is about to appear at last!
And always, sad thought!
Always some erased letter
Was missing, alas! from the divine name.
And now, in my misery,
I know no more than the child
Who babbles after his mother
This sublime and triumphant name;
I know no more than the dawn,
Which has just opened its gaze,
And seeks him in vain everywhere,
No more than all nature
Which tells him and murmurs him,
And asks: Where then is my God?
That is why my soul is sad,
Like a sea breaking at night on a reef,
Like the harp of the Psalmist,
When he weeps at the edge of a coffin!
Like Horeb veiled under a dark cloud,
Like a sky without stars, or like a day without shadow,
Or like that old man who could not be consoled,
Who, heart overflowing with a fierce sorrow,
Could no longer dry the complaint on his mouth,
And said: Let me speak!
But what am I saying? Is it thou, truth, supreme day!
Who hidest thyself under thy splendor?
Or is it not my eye that has veiled itself
Under the clouds of my heart
These children prostrated at the steps of thy temple,
These humble women, these old men,
Their soul possesses thee and their eye contemplates thee,
Thy glory shines in their regards!
And I, I plunge in vain under so many funeral shadows,
Thy splendor hides thee from me!
Ah! the gaze that seeks has then more darkness
Than the eye lowered before thee?
God of light,
Hear my prayer,
Strike my eyelid
Like the rock!
Let the day be made,
For my soul is weary,
Lord, of seeking!
Star that I adore,
This day that I implore
Is not in the dawn,
Is not in the heavens!
Supreme truth!
Mysterious day!
From the hour one loves thee,
It is in ourselves,
It is in our eyes!
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-why-is-my-soul-sad-alphonse-de-lamartine/