Français
Español
Italiano
Deutsch
Português
What to do with the night when one sups in Lent?
Thus, glass in hand, two friends reasoned.
What talk to choose, honest and permitted,
But gay, such as old wine counsels and loves?
Rodolphe
Let us speak of our loves; joy and beauty
Are my dearest gods, after liberty.
Let us sketch, while clinking glasses, a joyous idyll.
Through woods and meadows, the shepherds of Virgil
Celebrated poetry at every hour, in every place;
Thus sings in the sun the golden cicada.
With a more modest voice, inspired at random,
We, like the cricket, sing by the fireside.
Albert
Let us do what pleases you. Sometimes, in this life,
A song cradles us and helps us to suffer,
And, if we offend the ancient poetry,
Its very shadow is sweet to one who knows how to cherish it.
Rodolphe
Rosalie is the name of the brunette girl
Whom inconstant chance has made me master and lord.
Her name is my delight, and, when I repeat it,
I feel it, each time, more deeply engraved in my heart.
Albert
I cannot in that tone speak of my beloved.
Although her name too is sweet to pronounce,
I could not without shame so offend her,
And say, in a single word, the secret of my life.
Rodolphe
May fortune abound in charming caprices
From our first glances we became lovers.
It was Shrove Tuesday at a masquerade;
We were supping; – Folly shook her bells,
And our budding love emerged from a bumper,
As once Venus from the foam of the waves.
Albert
What deep mysteries in human misery!
When, under the chestnut trees, beside her mother,
I saw her, with slow steps, enter so softly
(Her brow was so pure, her gaze so calm!),
Heaven is my witness, from the first moment,
I understood that loving her was useless pain;
And yet my heart took a bitter pleasure
In feeling that it loved and that it would suffer!
Rodolphe
Since that madcap head laughs at my bedside,
She drives away both sleep and boredom;
At the sound of our kisses joyful time flies,
And our bed of flowers has not yet a single crease.
Albert
Since in her eyes my sorrow was born,
No one knows the torment that tears me apart.
She herself does not know it, – and my only hope
Is that she will guess it one day, when I die of it.
Rodolphe
When my enchantress half-opens her eyelid,
Dark as night, pure as light,
On the enamel of her eyes shines a black diamond.
Albert
Like a drop of rain on a flower,
Like a pale star in the depths of the firmament,
Thus shines trembling the gaze of my life.
Rodolphe
Her brow is no larger than that of Venus.
By a ribbon knot two bands held back
Softly surround it with a fresh halo;
And, when at the foot of the bed her long hair falls,
One would think one saw, in the evening, on her loving flanks,
The Spanish mantilla gaily unrolling.
Albert
That happiness has not been granted to my eyes
Ever to see thus the beloved head.
The chaste sanctuary where her thought resides
Is always crowned with a golden diadem.
Rodolphe
See her, in the morning, chirping and skipping;
Her heart is a bird, – her mouth is a flower.
That is where one must seize this indolent girl,
And, on the vivid purple where laughter sparkles,
From her intoxicating breath breathe in the freshness.
Albert
Once only, I was in the evening near her;
Sleep was coming to her and making her more beautiful;
She leaned toward me her brow full of languor,
And, as one sees a sleeping rose open,
In a faint sigh, from my sweetheart’s lips,
I felt the perfume of her heart exhale.
Rodolphe
I would like to see one day my pretty minx,
At the neighboring tavern dazed with champagne,
Come, in a short petticoat, slip into your arms.
What would then become of your melancholy?
For after all everything is possible here below.
Albert
If the deep gaze of my dear mistress
One moment by chance rested on yours,
What would then become of that mad intoxication?
To love is something, and the rest is nothing.
Rodolphe
No, love that is silent is but a reverie.
Silence is death, and love is life;
And it is an old lie invented for pleasure,
To believe in happiness outside of voluptuousness!
I can neither share nor pity your suffering.
Chance is up there for the bold;
And he whose fear has killed hope
Deserves his misfortune and wrongs the gods.
Albert
No, when their immense soul entered into nature,
The gods did not tell everything to the impure matter
That received in its flanks their form and their beauty.
Reality is a vision.
No, broken flasks, some vain words
That one pronounces at random and thinks one exchanges,
Between two cold kisses some frivolous laughs,
And from an unknown being the passing contact,
No, that is not love, it is not even a dream,
And satiety, which succeeds desire,
Brings such disgust when the heart rebels,
That I do not know, at bottom, if it is pain or pleasure.
Rodolphe
Is it pain or pleasure, a well-closed alcove,
And the lighted punch, when the weather is bad?
Is it pain or pleasure, the incarnadine of the rose,
The whiteness of alabaster and the scent of spring?
When reality would be but an image,
And the light contour of things here below,
Heaven preserve me from knowing more!
The mask is so charming that I fear the face,
And even at carnival I would not touch it.
Albert
A tear says more than you could say.
Rodolphe
A tear has its worth, it is the sister of a smile.
With two talkative eyes sometimes I like to chat;
But the only true language in the world is a kiss.
Albert
So then, as you please, spend your idleness.
O my poor secret! how sweet our sorrows are!
Rodolphe
So then, as you please, let your sadness wander.
O my poor suppers! how people slander you!
Albert
Only take care that your scatterbrained beauty
Does not lose her gaiety in some honorable boredom.
Rodolphe
Only take care that your sleeping rose
Does not find a butterfly some fine summer evening.
Albert
From the first fires of day I see the light.
Rodolphe
Let us leave our dispute and empty our glass.
We love, that is enough, each in his own way.
I have known more than one, and I know the song.
The right is to the strongest, in love as in war,
And the woman one loves will always be right.
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-idylle-alfred-de-musset/