A Tear, Poem by Alphonse De Lamartine

Fall, silent tears,
On a pitiless earth;
No longer between pious hands,
Nor on the breast of friendship!

Fall like an arid rain
That splashes back on the rock,
That no ray of heaven wipes away,
That no breath comes to dry.

What does it matter to those men, my brothers,
The broken heart of a wretch?
Too far above my miseries,
My misfortune is so far from them!

Never, no doubt, any tears
Will darken the sky for them;
Their future has no alarms,
Their cup will have no gall.

Never will this frivolous crowd
That passes laughing before me
Have need of a word
To say to it: “I weep with you!”

Well then! let us no longer ceaselessly seek
The vain pity of humans;
Let us feed on my sadness,
And hide my brow in my hands.

At the hour when the solitary soul
Wraps itself in black crepe,
And no longer expects anything from the earth,
Widow of its last hope;

When friendship that forgets it
Turns aside from its path,
When its last staff, which bends,
Breaks and tears its hand;

When weak man, who dreads
The contagion of misfortune,
Leaves us alone on our road
Face to face with sorrow;

When the future has no more charms
That make one desire tomorrow,
And when the bitterness of tears
Is the only taste of our bread;

It is then that your voice rises
In the silence of my heart,
And that your hand, my God! lifts
The frozen weight of my sorrow.

One feels that your tender word
Cannot mingle with others,
Lord! and that it consoles
Only those whom no one could console.

Your celestial arm draws us
Like a friend against his heart,
The world, which sees us smile,
Says to itself: “Where does this happiness come from?”

And the soul melts into prayer
And converses with the heavens,
And the tears of the eyelid
Dry by themselves from our eyes,

Like a winter ray wipes away,
On the branch or on the rock,
The last drop of rain
That no shadow could dry.

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-a-tear-alphonse-de-lamartine/