Sailors! Sailors! You Will Unfurl the Sails, Poem by Victor Hugo

Poem by Victor Hugo Collection Les Rayons et les OmbresThemes SeaPeriod 19th century

XVI

Sailors! Sailors! You will unfurl the sails;
You will sail, joyful at times, gloomy often;
And you will watch by the glimmers of the stars
The shore, reef or port, according to the gust of wind.

Envious, you will bite the base of the statues.
Birds, you will sing! You will grow green, branches!
Doors, you will crumble, covered with ivy.
Bells, you will make the hamlets live and dream.

Tingeing your nature with the ways of all men,
Travelers, you will go like wandering torches;
You will walk pensive on the earth where we are,
Remembering sometimes the tombs.

Oaks, you will grow in the depths of solitudes.
In the misty distances, by the light of evenings,
Old willows, you will take on sad postures,
And you will mirror yourselves vaguely in the wash-houses.

Nests, you will quiver feeling wings grow;
Furrows, you will shudder feeling the wheat rise.
Torches, you will cast red sparks
That will whirl like a troubled spirit.

Thunders, you will name the God whom the sea names.
Streams, you will nourish the flower that April gilded;
Your waves will reflect the austere shadow of man.
And your waves will crumble, and man will pass.

Each thing and each one, soul, being, object or number,
Will follow its course, its law, its goal, its passion,

Bringing its stone to the indefinite and dark work
That creation accomplishes with humankind!

I, I will contemplate the God father of the world,
Who delivers to our thirst, in shadow or in light,
The sky, that great urn, adorable and deep,
Where one draws calm and serenity!

Victor Hugo

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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