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What! the son of nothingness has cursed existence!
What! you can accuse me of my own blessings!
You can close your eyes to the magnificence
Of the gifts I have made you!
You did not yet exist, senseless creature,
Already I was giving birth to the design of your happiness;
Already, like its fruit, eternal thought
Carried you in its breast.
Yes, your future being lived in my memory;
I prepared the times according to my will.
At last that day appeared; I said: Be born for my glory
And your bliss!
You were born: my tenderness, invisible and present,
Did not deliver my work to the chances of fate;
I warmed the languishing sap of your senses
With the fires of my gaze.
With a mysterious milk I filled the breast;
You drank without effort from these sources of love,
I strengthened the springs, I rounded the pupil
In which the day was painted.
Your soul, for a time eclipsed by the senses,
Like your eyes at day, opened to reason
You thought; speech completed your thought,
And I engraved my name there.
In what brilliant character
That great name offered itself to your eyes!
You saw my goodness on the earth,
You read my grandeur in the heavens!
Order was my intelligence;
Nature, my providence;
Space, my immensity!
And, thirsting shadow of my being,
Time depicted my duration to you,
And destiny, my will!
You adored me in my power,
You blessed me in your happiness,
And you walked in my presence
In simplicity of heart;
But today that misfortune
Has covered with an importunate shadow
These vivid clarities of awakening,
Your voice questions and blames me,
The cloud covers your soul,
And you no longer believe in the sun.
“No, you are now only a great problem
That fate offers to reason;
If this world were your emblem,
This world would be just and good.”
Stop, proud thought;
To the law I have traced for you
You claim to compare my law?
Know their august difference
You have only a day to be just,
I have eternity before me!
When the veils of my wisdom
Are lowered before your eyes,
These evils, at which your weakness groans,
Will be transformed into virtues,
From these ceasing obscurities
You will see emerging triumphant
My justice and your liberty;
It is the flame that purifies
The divine crucible in which life
Is changed into immortality!
But your hardened heart doubts and still murmurs;
This day is not enough for your rebellious eyes,
And in the night of the senses you would like to see blossom
From the eternal dawn
The celestial clarities!
Wait; this half-light, mingled with a dark shadow,
Is enough to guide you in this earthly place:
Look at who I am, and walk without murmuring,
As nature does
On the faith of its God.
The earth does not know the law that fecundates it;
The ocean, driven back under my all-powerful arm,
Does it know how, at the will of the nocturnal crescent,
From its deep prison
The sea vomits its wave,
And from the shores it floods
Recedes with roaring?
This dazzling sun, shadow of my light.
Does it know where the sign of my hand leads it?
Has it traced for itself a glorious path?
At the end of its course,
When I extinguish its light,
Does it promise to the earth
The sun of tomorrow?
Yet all subsists and walks in assurance.
But my voice each morning awakens the universe!
I call the sun from the depths of its deserts
Crossing the distance,
It rises in my presence,
Answers me, and darts
Onto the throne of the airs!
And you, whose life is my breath;
You, over whom my eyes are open,
Can you fear that I forget you,
Man, king of this universe?
Do you believe my virtue slumbers?
No, my immense gaze keeps watch
Over all the worlds at once!
The sea that flees at my word,
Or the dust that flies away,
Follow and understand my laws.
Walk by the torch of hope
Even into the shadow of death,
Assured that my providence
Sets no trap for your steps.
Each dawn justifies it,
The entire universe trusts in it,
And man alone has doubted it!
But my paternal vengeance
Will confound this faithless doubt
In the abyss of my goodness.
Alphonse de Lamartine
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-providence-to-man-alphonse-de-lamartine/