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In vain day follows day,
They glide without leaving a trace;
In my soul nothing erases you,
O last dream of love!
I see my swift years
Accumulate behind me,
As the oak around itself
Sees its faded leaves fall.
My brow is whitened by time;
My cooled blood scarcely flows,
Like that wave which is chained
By the icy breath of the south winds.
But your young and brilliant image,
Which regret comes to embellish,
In my breast cannot grow old
Like the soul, it has no age.
No, you have not left my eyes;
And when my solitary gaze
Ceased to see you on earth,
Suddenly I saw you in the heavens.
There, you appear to me still
As you were on that last day,
When toward your celestial dwelling
You flew away with the dawn.
Your pure and touching beauty
In the heavens themselves has followed you;
Your eyes, where life was fading,
Shine with immortality!
The zephyr’s amorous breath
Still lifts your long hair;
On your breast their undulating waves
Fall back in tresses of ebony,
The shadow of this uncertain veil
Still softens your image,
Like the dawn that emerges
From the last veils of morning.
The sun’s celestial flame
With the days returns and flees;
But my love has no night,
And you always shine upon my soul.
It is you whom I hear, whom I see,
In the desert, in the cloud;
The wave reflects your image;
The zephyr brings me your voice.
While the earth sleeps,
If I hear the wind sigh,
I think I hear you murmur
Sacred words in my ear.
If I admire those scattered fires
That sprinkle the veil of nights,
I think I see you in each star
That pleases my gaze the most.
And if the breath of the zephyr
Intoxicates me with the perfume of flowers.
In its most suave odors
It is your breath that I inhale.
It is your hand that dries my tears,
When I go, sad and solitary,
To pour out in secret my prayer
Near the consoling altars.
When I sleep, you watch in the shadows;
Your wings rest upon me;
All my dreams come from you,
Sweet as the gaze of a shadow.
During my sleep, if your hand
Unraveled the web of my days,
Celestial half of my soul,
I would go to awaken in your breast!
Like two rays of the dawn,
Like two mingled sighs,
Our two souls no longer form
But one soul, and I still sigh!
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-remembrance-alphonse-de-lamartine/