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The cheerful sun warmed the awakened plains.
Caresses floated beneath the calm foliage.
Offering its perfumed chalice to every desire,
Where the dewdrop still sparkled,
Each flower, courted by beautiful insects,
Let its sap, stored in its throat, be drunk.
Broad butterflies resting upon them
Drained them with a flutter of wings,
And one wondered which was alive,
For the creature looked like an animated flower.
Calls of tenderness burst out in the wind.
Everything, under the warm dawn, had its beloved!
And in the rosy darkness where the days rise
One heard larks singing in pairs,
Stallions neighing their frisky loves,
While offering their hearts with pirouettes
Little gray rabbits leaped at the edge of a wood.
An amorous joy, spread out and powerful,
Sowing across the horizon its growing fever,
To trouble every heart took every voice,
And under the shelter of the hospitable branches
Of trees, inhabited by tiny peoples,
By those beings like grains of dust,
Crowds of animals unknown to our eyes,
For whom the tender buds are immense kingdoms,
Mingled with the rising day their atom-like tendernesses.
Two young people were walking along a quiet path
Drowned in the harvests that covered the countryside.
They did not embrace with arm or hand;
The man did not raise his eyes to his companion.
She said, sitting down on the far side of a slope:
“Go on, I had seen well that you no longer love me.”
He made a gesture to answer: “Is it my fault?”
then he sat down beside her. They mused, side by side.
She resumed: “One year! only one year! and there you have
How all that eternal love flew away!
My soul still trembles with your sweet words!
My heart is all burning with your mad caresses!
Who then could have changed you overnight?
You kissed me yesterday, my Love; and your hand,
Today, seems to flee as soon as it touches me.
Why then do you no longer have kisses on your lips?
Why? answer!” He said: “Do I know?”
She put her gaze into his to read there:
“You no longer remember how you kissed me,
And how each embrace was a long delirium?”
He got up, rolling between his distracted fingers
The thin cigarette, and, in a weary voice:
“No, it’s over, he said, what’s the use of regrets?
One cannot call back a thing that has passed,
And we can do nothing about it, my friend!”
With slow steps
They left, heads bowed, arms dangling.
She had sobs that swelled her throat,
And tears came to shine at the edge of her eyes.
They made fly off in the middle of a barley field
Two pigeons that, loving each other, fled with a joyful flight.
Around them, beneath their feet, in the azure above their heads,
Love was everywhere like a great festival.
For a long time the winged pair turned in the blue sky.
A lad going off to work struck up
A song that made come running, red and tender,
The farm maid lying in wait to wait for him.
They walked without speaking. He seemed irritated
And watched her sometimes with a sidelong glance;
They reached a wood. On the grass of a path,
Through the greenery still light and new,
Pools of sunlight fell before their steps;
They advanced over them and did not see them.
But she collapsed, breathless and without strength,
At the foot of a tree whose bark she gripped,
Unable to hold back her sobs and cries.
He waited at first, motionless and surprised,
Hoping that soon she would be calmed,
And his lip sent out nets of smoke
That he watched rise, lose themselves in the pure air.
Then he stamped his foot, and suddenly, with a hard brow:
“Stop it, I want neither tears nor quarrel.”
“Let me suffer alone, go away,” she said.
And raising to him her eyes drowned in tears:
“Oh! how my soul was distraught and delighted!
And now it is so full of sorrows!…
When one loves, why is it not for life?
Why stop loving? I, I love you… And never
Will you love me again as you loved me!”
He said: “I can’t help it. Life is made that way.
Every joy, here below, is always incomplete.
Happiness lasts only a time. I never promised you
That it would last to the edge of the grave.
A love is born, grows old like the rest, and falls.
And then, if you want, we’ll become friends
And we’ll have, after this harsh shock,
The affection of old lovers, serene and gentle.”
And to raise her he took her by the arm.
But she sobbed: “No, you don’t understand.”
And, twisting her hands in a mad grief,
She cried: “My God! my God!” He, without a word,
Looked at her. He said: “You don’t want to end this,
I’m leaving” and left never to return.
She felt alone and raised her head.
Legions of birds made a storm
Of joyful cries. Sometimes a distant nightingale
Cast a sharp trill into the cool morning air,
And its supple throat seemed to roll pearls.
In all the cheerful foliage songs burst out:
The oboe of the linnets and the whistle of the blackbirds,
And the alert little refrain of the finches.
Some bold sparrows, on the grass of the path,
Loved each other, beaks open and wings quivering.
She felt everywhere, under the greening wood,
Run and throb a burning and tender breath;
Then, raising her eyes to the sky, she said:
Love! man is too low ever to understand you!”
Guy de Maupassant
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-end-of-love-guy-de-maupassant/