Childhood

Poem by Gérard De Nerval Period 19th century

How sweet were those days of my childhood,
When always cheerful, without care, without sorrow,
I flowed through my gentle existence,
Without thinking of tomorrow.
What use to me were so many branches of knowledge
That gave my mind its flight,
We have no need of the sciences,
When we live in the golden age!
My heart, still tender and untested,
Knew nothing of darkness,
Gathering the flowers of life,
I did not feel its thorns,
And my childish caresses
Were pure and without bitterness.
Did I believe, free from all pain,
That in our vast universe,
All the evils that issued from hell
Had established their domain?

We are far from that happy time,
The reign of Saturn and of Rhea,
When the virtues, the scourges of the wicked,
Were adored upon the earth,
For in those blessed lands
Men were children.

Gérard de Nerval

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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