Life, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

One must admire all things to exalt oneself
And stand taller than those who have lived
By guilty suffering and defeated desires:
Harsh reality, formidable and supreme,
Distills a liquor red and tonic enough
To intoxicate the head and burn the heart.

Oh clear and pure wheat from which the tares are chased!
Clean flame, chosen among a thousand torches
Of legendary brilliance, but of false prestige!
Tell me, to mark one’s step in true existence,
By an arduous path toward a distant welcome,
With no weapon at one’s brow but lucid pride!

To walk in one’s pride and in one’s confidence,
Straight to the obstacle, with hope most stubborn
Of reducing it, with precise blows of will,
Of prompt intelligence or ample patience
And to feel growing and expanding the sentiment
Of being, from day to day, stronger, superbly.

To love with fervor oneself in all the others
Who exalt themselves likewise in the same combats
Toward the same future whose step we hear;
To love their heart and their brain like unto yours
Because they have suffered, in dark and mad days,
Same anguish, same dread and same mourning as we.

And to become so drunk on the human battle
– Pale and floating reflection of the monstrous assaults
Or of the golden groupings of stars, up there –
That one lives in all that acts, struggles or quivers
And that one accepts avidly, with open heart,
The harsh and terrible law that governs the universe.

Emile Verhaeren

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

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