Li-Tai-Pe, Poem by Charles Cros

Poem by Charles Cros Collection The Sandalwood CasketPeriod 19th century

To Ernest Cabaner.

A thousand summers and a thousand winters
Will pass over the universe,
Without the verses of the poet-god
Li-Tai-Pe ever dying,
In the Middle Kingdom.

Exiled on our earth,
He contemplated in sorrow
The sky, remembering
The beautiful starry land
He inhabits now.

He lowered his brush;
And one saw many a bird
Listening, as it fluttered
Among the flowers of the cradle,
To the poet reciting.

On the yellow and green paper
Covered with silver flies,
Fine and black the strokes rained down.
Just so, on the snow, in winter,
Dead wood in the forests.

There is no sigh of the wind,
No clamor of the moving wave
That is as sweet as the sounds
That the poet, dreaming,
Knew how to put into his songs.

Aromatic scents
That perfume the heights,
Thyme, lily of the valley, roses, jasmine,
As in deceptive dreams,
Arose beneath his long hand.

Now he is beside
Fo-Hi, in the fresh meadows,
Where the sages all go,
In the shade of the great cypresses,
To drink and laugh with the mad.

Charles Cros

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-litaipe-charles-cros/