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Since Adam, that cruel man,
Lost his famous garden,
Where his wife, around an apple,
Frolicked without a farthingale,
I do not believe that on earth
There is a place planted with trees
More celebrated, more visited,
Better made, prettier, better haunted,
Better practiced in the art of pleasing,
More examined, more praised,
More described, more read, more sung,
Than the tedious park of Versailles.
O gods! O shepherds! O rockeries!
Old Satyrs, grumbling Terms,
Old little yews in rows like onions,
O basins, quincunxes, charmilles!
Bowling greens full of majesty,
Where on Sundays, all summer long,
So many honest families yawn!
Phantoms of Roman emperors,
Pale inanimate nymphs
Who stretch your hands to passersby,
By water jets all sniveling!
Turnstiles of amiable bushes,
Clipped groves where warblers
Search weeping for their songs,
Where the gods make such a fuss
To live dry in their basins!
O chestnut trees! do not be afraid;
May your motionless foliage,
Knowing me a versifier,
Remain no less tranquil.
No, I swear by Apollo
And by all the sacred valley,
By you, chipped Naiads,
On three pebbles so badly lying,
By you, old ballet masters,
Fauns dancing on the greenery,
By you yourself, august palace,
Now inhabited only in painting,
By Neptune, his fork in fist,
No, I shall not describe you.
I know too well what grieves you;
From Phoebus I see the effects:
It is the verses made about you
That give you such a sad look.
So many sonnets, madrigals,
So many ballads, rondeaux,
Where your marvels were celebrated,
Have deafened your ears,
And one can see you sleep
From having been too rhymed.
In these places where boredom rests,
Out of respect I too have slept.
It was, I think, only halfway:
I was dreaming of something else.
But do you remember, my friend,
Those steps of rose marble,
On the way to the water piece
On the Orangerie side,
To the left, leaving the château?
It was that way, I bet,
That the peerless king came,
In the evening, at sunset,
To see in the forest, in silence,
The day flee and hide
(If indeed in his presence
The sun dared to set).
How pretty these three steps are!
How noble and soft this marble is!
Cursed be by heaven, we said,
The foot that would have soiled them!
Is it not true? Remember.
– With what charm is shaded
This half-broken slab!
Do you see these veins of azure,
Light, fine and polished,
Running, under the paled roses,
In the whiteness of a pure marble?
Thus, in the robust and hard breast
Of Diana the huntress,
Divine blood must have run;
Such, and colder, is a hand
That once led me on a leash.
Do not, moreover, forget
That these steps of which I have memory
Are not in that staircase
Always deserted and full of glory,
Where that king, who did not wait,
Waited one day, step by step,
For Condé, wearied by victory.
They are near a white vase,
Neatly made and very gallant.
Is it modern? Is it antique?
Others than I know that;
But I rather like to see it there,
Being sure it is not Gothic.
It is a good vase, a good neighbor;
I willingly believe it a cousin
Of my rose-colored steps;
It shelters them with pride.
O my God! in so little a thing
How much grace and how much beauty!
Tell us, gracious steps,
The kings, the princes, the prelates,
And the marquises with great fracas,
And the beautiful ambitious women,
Whose steps you have counted;
Those especially, I imagine,
In touching you did not weigh.
When velvet or ermine
Brushed your delicate contours,
Which was the lighter?
Is it Queen Montespan?
Is it Hortense with a novel,
Maintenon with her breviary,
Or Fontange with her ribbon?
Beautiful marble, have you seen La Vallière?
Of Parabère or of Sabran
Which knew better how to please you?
Between Sabran and Parabère
Even the Regent, after supper,
Staggered so as to mistake them.
Have you seen the powerful Voltaire,
That great rebel against prejudices,
Advocate of the wrongly judged,
Of Christ that terrible adversary,
Beadle of the temple of Cythera,
Presenting to Pompadour
His old holy water of the court?
Have you seen, as at a hermitage,
The plump Dubarry
Run, drinking milk,
Barefoot, on the flowering grass?
Steps that know our history,
In the pompous days of your glory,
What a happy world in these groves!
So many great lords, lackeys,
So many duchesses, flighty women,
Red heels, sequins,
So many sighs and gossips,
So many plumes and caps,
Falbals and breeches,
So much powder under these arbors,
So many people, not counting fools!
August reign of the wig,
The bourgeois who disowns you
Deserves on his flat neck
To have an eternal bonnet.
And you, century of playful humor,
Century all covered with starch,
Those who scorn your flour
Are in horror to Cupid!…
Is that your opinion, rose marble?
Despite myself, however, I suppose
That the chance that placed you there
Had not made you for that.
In lands where the sun shines,
Near a Greek or Latin temple,
The beautiful feet of a young girl,
Smelling of heather and thyme,
Striking you with their sandals,
Would have better gladdened your slabs
Than a satin slipper.
Is it, moreover, for that use
That nature had formed
Your block formerly virgin and wild
That genius would have animated?
When the pickaxe and trowel
Sealed you in this muddy park,
Planting you there despite the gods,
Mansard insulted Praxiteles.
Yes, if your flanks were to open,
Some new divinity
Should have come out.
When their saw grated on you,
The stonecutters wounded
Some Venus still sleeping,
And the purple that colors you
Comes from the blood she shed.
Is it then true that everything
Can be thus trampled underfoot,
The rock where the eagle perches,
Like the rose leaf
That falls and dies in our paths?
Does the common mother,
Once her work accomplished,
Randomly deliver matter,
Like thought to oblivion?
Does the bitter torment
Throw the pearl to the lapidary
So he crushes it without ceremony?
Can the absurd vulgar
Dishonor everything on earth
At the whim of a pedant or a mason?
Alfred De Musset
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-on-three-steps-of-rose-marble-alfred-de-musset/