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The emperor saw, one evening, the sun go down;
He bowed his sad head, and remained without speaking.
Then, as he heard his copper clocks,
Which he had just set, follow one another with a halting step,
He thought that in times past, without having succeeded,
He had taken care to set humans in accord.
– Lord, Lord! said he, who gave me the desire?
I have crossed the sea eleven times in my life;
The Netherlands ten times; England three times;
Have I made enough war on that poor Francis!
I have seen Africa twice and Germany nine times,
And now I die a subject of the King of Spain!
Ah! what is the use of reigning? I have no more enemy;
Each in the tomb, in his turn, has fallen asleep.
Like a starving dog, oblivion devours them all;
Already the evening of one century serves as dawn for another.
Have I then, more skillful at suffering longer,
Alone among so many kings, forgotten by death?
Or, when in their stiffened fingers the cup was full,
When the sword of God, to level the plain,
Decimated the great mountains, was I then so low,
That the archangel, passing by, did not see me?
Am I then to grow old counting my campaigns,
Like a shepherd his oxen descending from the mountains,
So that the lessons of the past may be read in my heart,
As in a pale book soon effaced?
Too far into the night my day stretches.
God knows to what children Europe has given herself!
On what arms will rest all this old universe,
Which with its hundred states, with its four seas,
I carried in my breast and in my bald head!
Philip!… may Saint Just save him from his crimes!
For from the day when, heir to his father, he felt
That for his great sword he was too small,
Did he not exchange heaven for earth,
For a masked executioner his austere confessor?
France!… oh! what destiny, in its games so profound,
Put the proud duenna into the hands of a buffoon king,
Who goes, adjusting his doublet to his size,
To paint himself a battle at the idle carrousels!
Ah! when Francis died, what wise man suspected
That he died regretted by Charles V alone?
With his last cry my last hour struck.
Where now to find anyone to weep for me?
My son leaves me here to finish; for after all
Who will tell him if it is from old age or hunger?
He gives me death as the price of his birth!
My benefits have cured him of his gratitude.
He comes to push me when I have stumbled. –
Very well. – I am going to fall. – The sun has set!
O earth! receive me; for I return your ashes!
I came naked from your breast, naked I go back down to it.
Thus spoke this man with a heart of iron;
Then, seeing himself in the shadow, he was afraid of hell!
– O my God! if, seeking a pardon that effaces me,
I found wrath written on your face,
As this evening, my eye, seeking the fleeing day,
In the depopulated sky finds only night!
What! not a dream, a sign, a word whispered in the ear,
Whose formidable echo then awakens!
No! – Nothing can be hidden from you, Lord.
Kyrie eleison! for I have sinned much!
Then, with tears he said his prayer,
His knees all trembling and his forehead on the stone.
Suddenly he stops, he rises, and his eyes
Were nailed to the earth and his thought to the heavens.
Behold, on the altar covered with funeral cloths,
The mournful torches have broken the darkness
And the priests standing, like black cypresses,
Assemble, astonished at the sinister preparations.
And the old servants said: – Who then is to be born
Or die? – and yet prayed without knowing him;
For the somber bell towers stirred with great noise,
And seemed two giants weeping in the night.
All struck their breasts and scarcely breathed.
Beneath the silver tears the ebony sepulcher
Opened, nuptial bed prepared by death,
Where life in its arms receives eternity.
Then a specter came, dragging itself along the walls,
Livid, to terrify the dreary funeral.
Thin and with extinguished eyes, and his foot, on the granite
Threshold, wavered in the folds of a shroud.
– Which of you, said he, respects and honors me?
(And his voice on the echo of the sonorous vault
Struck like the step of a bold horseman.)
Let him come with me to sleep under a pillar!
I lie down there, and I wait for whoever loves me to follow me.
As for those who have hated me, I will follow them myself;
They are there. – Let us pray then for my past crimes;
Let us weep and recite the hymn of the dead!
He walked toward his tomb, and turned pale: – Who stops me,
Said he? Does the feast not need a corpse?
And the coffin creaked under his frozen limbs,
Then the choir intoned the hymn of the dead.
Alfred De Musset
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-charlesv-at-the-monastery-of-saintjust-alfred-de-musset/