Leave Me Alone!

Poem by Gérard De Nerval Period 19th century

No, leave me, I beg of you;
In vain, so young and so pretty,
You would try to revive my heart:
Do you not see, in my sadness,
That my pale brow, void of youth,
Must no longer smile at happiness?

When winter with its cold breath
From the flowers that shine in our meadows
Freezes the blooming breast,
Who can restore to the dead leaf
Its scents that the breeze carries away
And its vanished brightness!

Oh! if I had met you
When my soul, inebriated,
Throbbed with life and with love,
With what rapture, what delirium
I would have welcomed your smile
Whose charm would have nourished my days.

But now, O young girl!
Your gaze is the star that shines
In the troubled eyes of sailors,
Whose boat, prey to shipwreck,
At the moment when the storm ceases,
Breaks apart and vanishes beneath the waves.

No, leave me, I beg of you;
In vain, so young and so pretty,
You would try to revive my heart:
On this pale brow, void of youth,
Do you not see that sadness
Has banished the hope of happiness?

Gérard de Nerval

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-leave-me-alone-gerard-de-nerval/