Français
Español
Italiano
Deutsch
Português
I was meditating, bent over an antique volume,
The dogmas of Plato and the laws of the Portico.
I wished to try the burden of life.
Besides, I was weary of childhood’s leisures,
And I entered, on the steps of beautiful hope,
Into this new world.
Often I had been told: “How charming is your age!
Your eyes, happy child, have no bitter tears,
Only pleasure can draw tears from you.”
And I too would say: “How beautiful youth is!
Everything smiles at its gaze; all paths, for it,
Are strewn with flowers!”
Yet, like me all brilliant with youth,
Guests were singing, full of a sweet intoxication;
I held out my hand, advancing toward them:
“Friends, will I not have a place at the feast?”
I said to them… And not one turned his head
Nor raised his eyes!
I withdrew pensive, with death in my soul.
Then, before my gaze came a woman.
I thought that in my night an angel had passed.
And everyone admired her smile full of charm;
But it filled me with horror! for never a tear
Had erased it.
“Just God! I cried, to my devouring thirst
The desert offers no beneficent spring.
I am the isolated tree on an unhappy soil,
As in a vast exile, placed in nature;
It has no echo for my murmuring voice
That loses itself in the heavens.
What mortal does not know, in the heart of storms,
Where to rest his head, sheltered from shipwrecks?
And I, toy of the waves, alone with my sorrows,
No friendly ship comes to strike my view,
None, on this sea where my boat is lost,
Carries my colors.
O sweet illusion! lull me with your dreams;
Seeking happiness from your laughing lies,
I flee trembling from reality;
For, for me, spring has no sweet shade;
The sun is without fires, the Ocean without shore,
And the day without light!”
Thus, to enliven his solitary ennui,
When God cast evil and good upon the earth,
I could find only my share of sorrow;
Guest repulsed from the public feast,
My accents would trouble the harmonious canticle
Of the children of the Lord.
Ah! if I resembled those men of stone
Who, seeking friendly shade and fleeing the light,
Have found in vice an easy pleasure!…
Those live happy!… But he who in his soul
Keeps some glimmer of a nobler flame,
He must die.
Ennui, dreadful vulture, has marked him for its prey;
He finds his torment in common joy;
Breathing in the sky all the fires of hell,
Happiness is for him only a horrible mixture,
For the sweetest honey on his lips changes
Into a bitter brew.
Until the day when, his soul devoured by ennui,
He finds for rest some unknown tomb,
And returns to the void, from which man had come;
Like a burning poison, enclosed in clay,
Ferments, and finally breaks the too fragile vessel
That had contained it.
Alfred De Musset
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-stanzas-alfred-de-musset/