The Alps, or Italy, Poem by Chateaubriand

So do you recognize at the bottom of your abysses
This pensive traveler,
With a sad heart, hair whitened like your peaks,
With slow and tardy step?

Long ago in this old wood, where a limpid water flows,
I sounded its depths
Bold as an eaglet, swift as a roe deer,
And gay as a hunter.

Alps, you have not suffered my destinies!
Time can do nothing to you;
Your brows have lightly borne the years
That weigh upon mine.

For the first time, when, filled with hope,
I crossed your ramparts,
Like the horizon, an immense future
Opened before my eyes.

Italy at my feet, and before me the world,
What a field for my desires!
I flew, I evoked that fertile Rome
In powerful memories.

Once more I saw the homeland of Tasso:
Imitating Godfrey,
Christian and knight, I went toward Syria
Full of ardor and faith.

Those days are no more, which my heart does not forget,
And this heart today
Under the brilliant sun of beautiful Italy,
Feels nothing but ennui.

Pompous ambassadors whom favor caresses,
Ministers, are you worth
The obscure companions of my vivid youth
And my pleasures so sweet?

Your names on the smiling shores that the Adige adorns
Shall be conquered by time,
While Catullus and Lesbia will still enchant
The waves of Benacus.

Politicians, warriors, you who claim to live
In posterity,
I agree: but one can arrive without following you,
At immortality.

I have seen those proud paths traced by Victory,
Amid the frost,
Those rocks of the Simplon that the arm of Glory
Hung for our soldiers:

Work of a giant, monument of genius,
Will you be better known
Than the rock where Saint-Preux told Meillerie
The torments of Venus?

I painted you too, enchanting chimera,
Fictions of love!
To sad truths time, which flees endlessly,
Now delivers my days.

History and the novel make two parts of life,
Which so soon tarnishes:
The novel begins it, and when it is withered
History ends it.

1822.

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-the-alps-or-italy-francois-rene-de-chateaubriand/