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Charles had perished: commissioner-executioners,
The laws that were called revolutionary,
Exile and the scaffold, confiscation.
It was France at last under the Convention.
In the numerous followers of the banner of crime
England saw a magnanimous man:
Milton, the great Milton (let us weep over humans)
Lavished his genius on foolish Puritans;
He detested above all, in his independence,
That unhappy party which a noble constancy
Attached to its King. By this cruel zeal,
Milton had withered himself with Cromwell’s honors.
One morning when he had an appetite for blood,
Preacher-soldiers drag into his presence
A man still young, but whose paled brow
Is prematurely aged by sorrow,
A royalist at last. In the fire that animates him,
Milton with a burning eye measures his victim,
Who, far from being sensitive to his own misfortunes,
Seems to admire his judge and pity his errors.
“Tell us what your name is, sycophant of a master,
Vassal with the double heart of a slave and a traitor.
Answer me.” — “My name is Davenant.” At this name
You would have seen suddenly the terrible Milton
Start, rise, and, overturning his seat,
Run to the prisoner whom the cohort surrounds.
“Your name is Davenant, you say? This cherished name!
Could you be that mortal, nourished by the Muses,
Who, in the sacred woods losing his youth,
Enchanted with his verses the banks of Permessus?”
Davenant replied: “It is true that formerly
The Aonian lyre trembled beneath my fingers.”
At these words, shedding a pious tear,
Forgetting the envious presence of witnesses,
Milton clasps the hand of the admired poet.
And then with that voice, with that inspired tone
That recounted Eve’s ineffable loves:
“You shall live, happy painter of elegant fables;
I swear it by the arts that had united us
Before the fate of Albion had banished them.
To hearts inflamed with so beautiful a flame,
Ah! what matters Pym’s vulgar quarrel?
Death strikes at random princes, subjects;
But beautiful verses, that is what never dies,
Whether one sings the people or the unjust tyrant:
Virgil is immortal celebrating Augustus!
What! the law would strike with its irritated blade
A child of Apollo?… No, no, posterity!
Soldiers, withdraw; thank you for your zeal!
This man is surely a faithful citizen,
A great republican: I know from good authority
That he greatly rejoiced at the death of Stuart.”
“No” cried Davenant, touched by this reproach.
But Milton, covering his mouth with his hand,
Pushes him first to the back of the study,
Locks him with a double turn, then with a little gold
Politely dismisses the Jacobin horde.
Toward his captive host he then makes his way,
Has wine brought, which he pours for him in great streams.
Strews the breakfast with pleasant talk:
No politics at all, but much criticism
On the spirit of the Latins and the Attic graces.
Davenant recited the idyll of the Brook;
Milton replied with the lively Allegro,
From the sweet Penseroso repeated the song so sad
And declaimed the choruses of Samson Agonistes.
The poets, charmed by their diverse talents,
Parted at last murmuring their verses.
Meanwhile, weary of its long miseries,
The people sighed for the laws of their fathers:
It recalled its King; crimes restrained
Were wisely pardoned by an edict.
Yet a few perfidious men were excepted.
Accomplices and abettors of the bloody regicides:
Milton had placed himself among the first.
Denounced by his glory, under the roof of an old friend
He had hoped to find shade and silence.
One night he weighed the inconstancy of his fate:
From a lamp borrowed from the tomb of the dead
Its paling gleam lit his remorse
He suddenly hears, toward the twelfth hour,
Knocking at the outer door of his lodging;
The bolts are broken by numerous soldiers.
Milton’s daughter runs up; they follow her steps.
Into the secret asylum a leader rushes:
A hat, coming to touch the orbit of his eyes,
Half veils his features; his eyes are filled
With tears that a cloak receives in its folds.
Milton does not see him: deprived of light,
Night reigns forever beneath his sad eyelid.
“Well then! what do they want of me? says the singer of Adam.
Speak: must I die?” — “It is still Davenant,”
Replies the man in the cloak. Milton suddenly cries out:
“O black treason! I who saved your life!”
“Yes,” replies the poet, taken aback, blushing.
“But you were guilty and I was innocent.
Firm Stoic, show your courage!
My old friend, death is the common lot:
Sooner or later, the journey is the same
For all travelers. Here is the fatal order.”
Milton’s daughter, a being full of charms,
Opens the dreadful paper which she bathes in tears:
It is she who often, in learned conversation,
Rereads old Homer to the Christian Homer
And from sacred texts, modest interpreter,
To her father she restores the celestial light
In exchange for the day she received from him.
Borrowing support at her father’s bedside,
In an altered voice she reads the sentence:
“Wishing to make clemency equal to justice,
It pleases us to grant, by full authority,
To Davenant, as the price of his fidelity,
The pardon of Milton. Charles.”
One must imagine
The transports caused by the touching adventure,
How many tears were shed in London
For the talents saved and the benefits returned!
London, 1797.
Chateaubriand
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-milton-and-davenant-francois-rene-de-chateaubriand/