If You Ever Weep

Poem by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly Collection PoussièresPeriod 19th century

If you ever weep, let it be in silence;
If you are seen weeping, at least dry your tears!
For you cannot find at the bottom of your suffering
The proud calm that is born of unjust sorrows.

No! you cannot. If your life is broken,
Who broke the heart in which you lived? Tell me,
Tell me who willed it, if I abandoned you?
Your bitter and vain tears would accuse only you!

Women are like that! Had I betrayed you,
You would come back to offer me your pardon on your knees.
If you loved me, why this sad folly
Of imploring love’s flight and abandonment?

My pride obeys you without risking a murmur.
From this heartless world I hide my regrets;
Under a light disdain I veil my torment,
And so well — that you yourself would be deceived by it!

And yet you loved me! Sad and swift love!
Did it not seem to me the deeper of the two?
Without me, what happiness were you so eager for,
Since with me you never seemed happy?

But now without me happier, I hope,
If you sometimes think of the one who loved you,
Do you not repent of having made a mystery
Of the pain you hid and that worried him?

And if you repent of it, hide it in your soul.
Is not everything, alas! between us consummated?
O you who never had a woman’s abandonment,
Remain what you were, O blond Sphinx too loved!

Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly

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

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