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So why then has he gone away, sweet love?
They come for a moment to give us a little light,
Then leave. These children, whom we believe to be ours,
Belong to someone who is not us. But the other two,
Do you not see them, old man? Yes, I see them,
Both. They are two, they could be three.
Now is the hour to go walking in the shade
Of the great woods, full of birds whose number God alone knows
And who will fly away too into the unknown.
He has his white hat, she shows a bare foot,
The two are side by side; we walk at random,
And the sky shines, and I push the carriage.
The whole flowering plain looks like a paradise;
The lizard runs at the foot of the old willows, while
At the end of the branches the robin comes to sing.
Miss Jeanne is fifteen months old, and George
Is thirty; he watches over her; he is the complete man;
Girls like that make his happiness; he is
In admiration of these pretty pink fingers,
Comparing to them, saying all sorts of things,
His big hands, his own, which will be three years old,
And laughs; he shows Jeanne on the road to the peasants.
Ah indeed! he walks, he does; this little one drags along;
And Jeanne laughs to see George laugh; a queen
On a throne, that is Jeanne in her basket;
She is beautiful; and the oak speaks of her to the chestnut tree,
And the elm greets her and points her out to the maple,
So venerable is childhood under the deep sky.
George has the feeling of his greatness; he laughs
But he protects, and Jeanne has faith in his mind;
George watches with a rather fierce air
This child who sometimes puts a finger in her mouth;
The paths are tangled and we get confused.
As the whole dark wood is full of butterflies,
Let’s run, says George. He wants to get down. Jeanne is merry.
With them I stagger, with them I babble.
Oh! the adorable joy, and how charming they are!
What an august hymn at the bottom of their cooings! Jeanne would like to have all the birds that pass;
George empties a puppet whose springs break,
And ponders; and both chatter; their joyful cries
Seem to make eyes open everywhere in the shade;
Gorges, while eating medlars and apples,
Brings me his toy; I who know men
Better than George, and who knows the secrets of destiny,
I mend with a thread his old puppet.
My George, do not go in the grass; it is soaked.
And the wind rocks the tree, and Jeanne her doll.
We feel God in this pensive wood whose sweetness
Mingles with the gaiety of the brother and sister;
We obey, Jeanne and I, George commands;
The nurse sings them a Norman song,
One of those heard in the evening on the roads,
And George stamps his foot, and Jeanne claps her hands.
And I blossom at their divine clamor,
I laugh; but you see beneath my laughter my tears,
Old trees, do you not? and you did not believe
That I would ever forget the little disappeared one.
Victor Hugo
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-a-lack-victor-hugo/