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(To M. de la Mennais)
Yes, my soul takes pleasure in shaking off its chains:
Laying down the burden of human miseries,
Letting my senses wander in this world of bodies,
To the world of spirits I rise without effort.
There, trampling beneath my feet this visible universe,
I soar freely through the fields of the possible,
My soul is cramped within its vast prison:
I need a dwelling place that has no horizon.
Like a drop of water poured into the Ocean,
The infinite absorbs my thought within its breast;
There, queen of space and of eternity,
It dares to measure time, immensity,
To approach the void, to traverse existence,
And to conceive of God the inconceivable essence.
But as soon as I wish to paint what I feel,
All speech expires in powerless efforts.
My soul believes it speaks, my tongue, entangled,
Strikes the air with twenty sounds, shadow of my thought.
God made for spirits two diverse languages:
In articulated sounds one flies through the air;
This bounded language is learned among men,
It suffices for the needs of the exile where we are,
And, following the inconstant destinies of mortals,
It changes with climates or passes with time.
The other, eternal, sublime, universal, immense,
Is the innate language of all intelligence:
It is not a dead sound scattered through the air,
It is a living word heard within the heart;
We hear it, we explain it, we speak it with the soul;
This felt language touches, illumines, inflames;
Of what the soul experiences burning interpreters,
It has only sighs, ardors, impulses;
It is the language of heaven spoken by prayer,
And which tender love alone understands on earth.
In the pure regions where I love to fly,
Enthusiasm also comes to reveal it to me.
It alone is my torch in this deep night,
And better than reason it explains the world to me.
Come then! It is my guide, and I wish to serve you with it.
On its wings of fire, come, let yourself be carried away!
Already the shadow of the world fades from our sight,
We escape from time, we cross space.
And in the eternal order of reality,
Here we are face to face with truth!
That universal star, without decline, without dawn,
Is God, is that great whole, which adores itself!
He is; all is in him: immensity, time,
Are the pure elements of his infinite being;
Space is his dwelling, eternity his age;
The day is his gaze, the world is his image;
The whole universe subsists in the shadow of his hand;
Being, in eternal streams flowing from his breast,
Like a river nourished by that immense source,
Escapes from it, and returns to end where all begins.
Without bounds like him his perfect works
Bless at their birth the hand that made them!
He peoples the infinite each time he breathes;
For him, to will is to do, to exist is to produce!
Drawing all from himself alone, referring all to himself,
His supreme will is his supreme law!
But this will, without shadow and without weakness,
Is at once power, order, equity, wisdom.
Over all that can be he exercises it at his pleasure;
The void itself rises to him by degrees:
Intelligence, love, force, beauty, youth,
Without ever exhausting himself, he can give without ceasing,
And filling the void with his precious gifts,
From the lowest ranks of being he can draw forth gods!
But these gods of his hand, these sons of his power,
Measure from themselves to him the eternal distance,
Tending by their nature to the being who made them;
He is their end for all, and he alone suffices for himself!
There, there is the God whom every spirit adores,
Whom Abraham served, whom Pythagoras dreamed,
Whom Socrates announced, whom Plato glimpsed;
This God whom the universe reveals to reason,
Whom justice awaits, whom misfortune hopes for,
And whom Christ at last came to show to the earth!
He is no longer that God fabricated by man,
That God by imposture explained to error,
That God disfigured by the hands of false priests,
Whom our credulous ancestors adored trembling.
He is one, he is one, he is just, he is good;
The earth sees his work, and heaven knows his name!
Happy who knows him! happier who adores him!
Who, while the world either outrages or ignores him,
Alone, in the pious rays of the lamps of night,
Rises to the sanctuary where faith introduces him
And, consumed with love and gratitude,
Burns like incense his soul in his presence!
But to rise to him our cast-down spirit
Must borrow from on high its strength and its virtue.
One must fly to heaven on wings of flame:
Desire and love are the wings of the soul.
Ah! why was I not born in the age when humans,
Young, barely still escaped from his hands,
Near to God by time, nearer by innocence,
Conversed with him, walked in his presence?
Why have I not seen the world at its first sun?
Why have I not heard man at his first awakening?
Everything spoke to him of you, you spoke to him yourself;
The universe breathed your supreme majesty;
Nature, coming forth from the Creator’s hands,
Displayed in all directions the name of its author;
This name, since hidden under the rust of ages,
Shone in more brilliant strokes upon your Works;
Man in the past traced back only to you;
He invoked his father, and you said: It is I.
For a long time like a child your voice deigned to instruct him,
And by the hand for a long time you wished to lead him.
How many times in your glory you showed yourself to him,
In the valleys of Shinar, by the oaks of Mamre,
In the bush of Horeb, or on the august summit
Where Moses dictated his sublime law to the Hebrews!
These children of Jacob, firstborn of humans,
Received for forty years the manna from your hands
You struck their spirit with your living oracles!
You spoke to their eyes through the voice of miracles!
And when they forgot you, your angels descended
Recalled your memory to their frantic hearts!
But at last, like a river far from its source,
This memory so pure was altered in its course!
From that aged star the dark night of time
Eclipsed by degrees the brilliant rays;
You ceased to speak; oblivion, the hand of ages,
Wore away that great name imprinted in your works;
The centuries in passing made faith grow pale;
Man placed doubt between the world and you.
Yes, this world, Lord, has grown old for your glory;
It has lost your name, your trace and your memory
And to find them again we must, in its course,
Remount wave by wave along the long river of days!
Nature! firmament! the eye in vain contemplates you;
Alas! without seeing the God, man admires the temple,
He sees, he follows in vain, in the deserts of the skies,
Of their thousand suns the mysterious course!
He no longer recognizes the hand that directs them!
An eternal prodigy ceases to be a prodigy!
As they shone yesterday, they will shine tomorrow!
Who knows where their glorious path began?
Who knows if this torch, which shines and which fecundates,
A first time has risen over the world?
Our fathers did not see its first turn shine
And the eternal days have no first day.
Over the moral world, in vain your providence,
In these great changes reveals your presence!
It is in vain that in your games the empire of humans
Passes from one scepter to another, wandering from hands to hands;
Our eyes accustomed to its vicissitude
Have made of your glory a cold habit;
The centuries have seen so many of these great strokes of fate:
The spectacle is worn out, man, numb, falls asleep.
Awaken us, great God! speak and change the world;
Make the void hear your fecund word.
It is time! arise! come out of this long repose;
Draw another universe from this other chaos.
For our drowsy eyes other spectacles are needed!
For our wavering spirits other miracles are needed!
Change the order of the heavens that no longer speaks to us!
Hurl a new sun at our dazzled eyes!
Destroy this old palace, unworthy of your glory;
Come! show yourself and force us to believe!
But perhaps, before the hour when in the desert skies
The sun will cease to light the universe,
From this moral sun the eclipsed light
Will cease by degrees to light thought;
And the day that will see this great torch destroyed
Will plunge the universe into eternal night.
Then you will break your useless work:
Its thunderstruck debris will repeat from age to age:
Alone I am! outside of me nothing can subsist!
Man ceased to believe, he ceased to exist!
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-god-alphonse-de-lamartine/