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The sun will bear the day to other worlds;
Across the desert horizon Phoebe mounts without a sound,
And casting, as she pierces the deepest darkness,
A transparent veil upon the brow of night.
See from the mountaintops her undulating lights
Like a river of flame flood the hillsides,
Sleep in the valleys, or glide along the slopes,
Or leap far off from the shining bosom of the waters.
The doubtful glimmer, spread through the shadow,
Tints with an azure day the pale obscurity,
And makes the horizons bathed in her soft light
Swim far off in the vast expanse!
The Ocean, in love with these tranquil shores,
Calms, in kissing their feet, its stormy transports,
And pressing in its arms these gulfs and these islands,
With its humid breath refreshes their edges.
Of the wave that in turn advances and retreats
The eye loves to follow the flexible contour afar:
One would say a lover who in his delirium presses
The virgin who resists, and yields in turn!
Gentle as the sigh of a sleeping child,
A vague and plaintive sound spreads through the air:
Is it an echo of heaven that charms our ear?
Is it a sigh of love from the earth and the seas?
It rises, it falls, it is reborn, it expires,
Like a heart oppressed by a weight of delight,
It seems that in these nights nature breathes,
And complains like us of its felicity!
Mortel, open your soul to these torrents of life!
Receive through all your senses the charms of the night,
To intoxicate you with love her shadow invites you;
Her star rises in the sky, and leads you.
Do you see that distant fire tremble on the hill?
By the hand of Love it is a lighted beacon;
There, like a bent lily, the loving woman who leans
Lends an eager ear to the steps of the beloved!
The virgin, in the dream where her soul wanders,
Lifts an azure eye that reflects the heavens,
And her fingers wandering at random on her guitar
Cast to the evening winds mysterious sounds!
“Come! amorous silence occupies the space afar;
Come breathe the coolness near me in the evening!
It is the hour; scarcely in the distance does the sail that fades
Grow white as it brings back the peaceful fisherman!
“Since the hour when your boat fled far from the shore,
I have followed all day your sail on the seas,
As from its nest the timid dove
Follows the wing of the wood pigeon that whitens in the air!
“While it glided beneath the shadow of the shore,
I recognized your voice in the voice of the echoes;
And the evening breeze, dying on the beach,
Brought back to me your songs prolonged over the waves.
“When the wave roared on the foaming coast,
To the star of the seas I murmured your name,
I relit its lamp, and by your only lover
The amorous prayer put the north wind to flight!
“Now beneath the sky all rests, or all loves:
The wave, undulating, comes to sleep on the edge;
The flower sleeps on its stem, and nature itself
Beneath the canopy of night withdraws and falls asleep.
“See! the moss has carpeted the valley for us,
The vine shoot curves there in tortuous folds,
And the breath of the wave, mingled with the orange tree,
With its flowers that it scatters perfumes my hair.
“In the soft light of the serene vault
We shall sing together, seated beneath the jasmine,
Until the hour when the moon, gliding toward Misenum,
Loses itself paling in the fires of morning.”
She sings; and her voice by intervals expires,
And, from the chords of the lute more faintly struck,
The drowsy echoes deliver to the zephyr
Only dying sighs, broken by silence!
He who, his heart full of delirium and flame,
At this hour of love, beneath this enchanted star,
Would suddenly feel the dream of his soul
Come alive beneath the features of a chaste beauty;
He who, on the moss, at the foot of the sycamore,
To the murmur of the waters, beneath a canopy of sapphires,
Seated at her knees, from one dawn to the next,
Would have to speak to her only with the accent of sighs;
He who, breathing her adored breath,
Would feel her hair, lifted by the winds,
Caress in passing his brushed eyelid,
Or roll upon his brow their undulating rings;
He who, suspending the fugitive hours,
Fixing with love his soul in this beautiful place,
Would forget that time still flows on these shores,
Would he be a mortal, or would he be a god?…
And we, to the gentle inclinations of these green Elysian fields,
On these shores where love would have hidden its Eden,
To the plaintive murmur of the appeased waves,
To the sleeping rays of the Elysian star,
Beneath this sky where life, where happiness abounds,
On these shores that the eye delights to wander,
We have breathed that air of another world,
Elise!… and yet they say we must die!
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-ischia-alphonse-de-lamartine/