Ferrara

Poem by Alphonse De Lamartine Collection Poetic MeditationsPeriod 19th century

(Added in the 1849 Subscribers’ Edition.)

Whether man or God, every genius is a martyr:
Later we kiss the instrument of torment;
The man adores the cross on which his victim dies,
And sets the cement of Tasso’s dungeon in a frame.

Tasso’s prison here, Galileo’s in Rome,
Sidney’s scaffold, pyres, crosses or tombs,
Ah! you give the right to rightly scorn man,
Who wants God to enlighten him, and hates His torches!

Great among the small, free among the servile,
If genius expires, it has well deserved it;
For we set up everywhere at the gates of our cities
These gallows of glory and of truth.

Far from softening us, may this fate reforge us!
Let us know the price of the gift, but open our hand.
Our tears and our blood are the oil of the lamp
That God makes us carry before the human race!

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-ferrara-alphonse-de-lamartine/