Since the wounded body, softly stretched out

Poem by Théodore Agrippa D'Aubigné Period 16th century

Since the wounded body, softly stretched out
On a bed that bends to the misfortunes it bears,
Makes me come to gnaw and taste my sorrows,
My limbs, enjoy the rest you claim,
While the spirit, weary of a stronger pain,
Equals the burning body with its ardent heat.

The conquered body yields, and weary of suffering
Opens to the dart of death its trembling breast,
Spreading its wretched bones upon a bed,
And the spirit, which cannot die to endure,
Whose violent fire never ends,
Has no means to find a bed for its rest.

The tiresome physicians judge diversely
Of the end of my life and of the ardent flame
That makes even the body suffer for my soul,
But who could judge of the eternal torment
That presses me from elsewhere? I know well that my soul
Has no physicians who could heal it.

My eyes swollen with tears look at my curtains
Crimson, blazing with the day from a window
That dazzles my sight and makes my eyes droop,
And I remember the celestial torches,
As the vermilion lily of my lady gives birth
To a red like the dawn of the Heavens.

I see my bed tremble just as I do,
I see my sky tremble, the bedframe and the fringe,
And the sighs of the winds pass trembling;
My spirit trembles likewise and groans beneath the burden
Of a love full of wind that, changeable, shifts
To the whims of a brain more inconstant than air.

Then when I see nothing that my eyes could see,
Without building upon it the laws of my martyrdom,
I flow my thought and my eyes into the bed;
Thus since my soul tries to conceive
My end by all means, I await and I desire
My body in a tomb, and my spirit in the Heavens.

Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné

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-since-the-wounded-body-softly-stretched-out-theodore-agrippa-d-aubigne/