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Everything shines, everything glows, everything loves, everything is gentle;
The birds seem mad with air and light;
The soul in the infinite believes it sees a great smile.
What is the use of exiling, kings? what is the use of proscribing?
Do you proscribe summer? do you exile me from flowers?
Can you prevent the breezes, the warmths,
The brightnesses, from being there, without yoke, without end, without number,
And from welcoming me, a banished man, in the shadows?
Can you diminish in me the great panting waves,
The ocean, the joyous foam, the spring
Throwing perfumes like a prodigal gone mad,
And take from me a ray of this immense sun?
No. And I forgive you. Go on, reign, live,
And try to be kings for a long time, if you can.
I, meanwhile, go foraging, and I gather,
Like you an empire, a sprig of honeysuckle,
And I carry it off, with a flower for my conquest.
When, above me, in the tree, a quarreler,
A male, picks a fight with his sweet female,
It is not my business and yet I meddle in it,
I say: Peace there, gentlemen birds, in the woods!
I reconcile them with my big voice;
A little fear one causes brings lovers back together.
I have no stream, nor torrent, nor rock;
My grass is narrow, and, quite near the sea,
My pool is not large, but it is not bitter.
This corner of earth is humble and pleases me; for space
Is above my head, and the star shines there, and the eagle passes there,
And vast Boreas hovers there in rapture.
This modest flowerbed and this high firmament
Are mine; these bouquets, these leaves, this grass
Love me, and I feel superb forgetfulness growing in me.
I would really like to know how I would go about
Remembering, I the host of these forests,
That there is someone, down there, far away, on this earth,
Who amuses himself proscribing, and reigns, and wages war,
Since I am here alone before the immensity,
And since, having over me the deep summer sky
Where the wind blows with the gentleness of a lyre,
I hear in the garden the little children laughing.
Victor Hugo
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-victor-hugo/