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Valley to the north, undulating meadow,
Charming deserts, my heart, formed for you,
Always seeks you in its melancholy.
At your sight, beloved solitude,
I know not what profound and sweet
Comes to take hold of my softened soul.
If one knew the calm that a stream
Bears in all my senses with its murmur,
This happy calm that I have, on the greenery,
Tasted a hundred times alone at the foot of a hill,
The cold lovers of the cold city dwelling
Would seek these easy pleasures.
If spring comes to enamel the fields,
In a cool corner of this peaceful valley,
I read seated under the branching walnut tree,
With its rough trunk, its flexible foliage.
The nightingale’s suave sigh
Then enchains my captive ear,
And in a dream above pleasure
Lets my fugitive soul float.
At the bottom of a wood when summer goes on,
Is there a lovely and winding wave
That, in its course, slow and voluptuous,
At each flower stops with a sigh?
A hundred times at the edge of this faithless wave
I will go to sleep under the fragrant hazel,
And dispute laziness with it.
Under the willow nourished by your friendly freshness,
River witness of my sighs,
In these enameled meadows, to the sweet sound of zephyrs,
Your passage offers here the image of life.
In deserted valleys, as you leave these flowers,
You lead your wandering waves:
Thus our inconstant hours
Pass from pleasures to sorrows.
But if voluptuous, at least in our course,
Of spring we will enjoy,
Our days more gently move away from their source,
Carrying with them a tender memory:
Thus you go less sad to the solitary rock,
Toward those woods where you always make,
If from these meadows your happy course
Carries away some light flower.
Of my spirit thus the enchantment
Is born and grows during a whole foliage.
The north wind comes, and one sees sadly
The isolated tree on the savage hill
Swaying in the midst of the storm.
White birds in divided flocks
Leave the shores of the ancient Ocean:
All in silence in a line arranged
Cleave the azure of a melancholy sky.
I wander in the forests where the frost hangs:
Interrupted by the sound of the leaf
That slowly I drag under my steps,
In its thoughts my spirit collects itself.
Who would believe it? consoling pleasures,
I find you again in this great mourning of the skies:
The widow’s garment embellishes nature.
There is a charm in woods without adornment:
These smiling meadows surrounded by green alders,
Where the soft wave enervates thought,
Where on the flowers the soul dreams cradled
To the sweet accords of foliage and airs,
These smiling meadows that the north wind harvests,
Please hearts. Toward the earth bowed down
We imitate, whether withered or fallen,
The grass in winter and the leaf in autumn.
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-spring-summer-and-winter-francois-rene-de-chateaubriand/