All That Which Smells of Man to Death Invites Me, Poem by Théodore Agrippa D'Aubigné

Poem by Théodore Agrippa D'Aubigné Period 16th century

… All that which smells of man to death invites me,
In what is hideous I seek my comfort:
Flee from me, pleasures, joys, hope and life,
Come, ills and misfortunes and despair and death!

I seek the deserts, the stray rocks,
The pathless forests, the perishing oaks,
But I hate the forests adorned with their leaves,
The frequented dwelling places, the whitening paths.

What pleasure it is to see the old nags
Whose dying bones pierce their old skins:
I die from birds gayly flying at full wing,
From the runs of foals and the leaps of kids!

Happy when I encounter a dried-up head,
A deer’s massacre, when I hear the cries of fawns;
But my soul dies of dried-up spite,
Seeing the mad doe at the leaps of her young.

I love to see the branch unburdened of beauties,
To trample the foliage spread by the effort
Of autumn, without hope their orange color
Gives me for pleasure the image of death.

An eternal horror, an eternal night
Prevents me from fleeing and from going outside
Save that from the wrathful air a cruel war
Just like the spirit, imprisons my body!

Never does the clear sun shine upon my head,
But the pitiless sky refuses me its eye,
If it rains, with the rain it bursts with storm,
Stingy of fair weather and jealous of the sun.

May my being be winter and the seasons troubled,
May the universe feel my afflictions,
And may oblivion still take from my doubled pains
The use of my lute and that of my verses.

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-all-that-which-smells-of-man-to-death-invites-me-theodore-agrippa-d-aubigne/