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My heart, I have filled it with the beautiful human tumult:
All that was alive and panting on earth,
Wild daring, silent will, austere ardor
And yesterday’s revolt and tomorrow’s order
Have not cooled my thought to judge them.
Dark coals, I have made of you a great fire of gold,
Exalting only its flame and its soaring flight
That mingled their splendor with anguished life.
And you, hatreds, virtues, vices, rages, desires,
I welcomed you all, with all your contrasts,
So that it might be longer, more complex and vaster
The marvelous thrill that made me quiver.
My own heart lives duly only if it strives;
Total humanity needs a torment
That works it with fury, like a ferment,
To broaden its life and lift its strength.
What does it matter, if one sets out, that one never arrives,
And that one sees the summits shifting in the distance!
Pride is to climb always toward a peak
Holding fear of oneself as the vilest of crimes;
He who falls has raised himself, all the same, one day,
If he has felt the intoxication of the fray
Exalt him to such a point in hatred or love,
That his sudden strength seemed tenfold
And then to touch, taste, feel, hear and see;
Open one’s eyes to watch the dawn or evening
Gild a horizon or tint a cloud with pink;
Walk near the sea and sing on the beach;
Listen to the mad wind dance over the forest
As over a blaze of vegetal flames;
Gather a perfume in a wave of petals;
Suck the juice of a fruit inexhaustible and fresh;
Or else devote hands to deep caresses,
In the evening, when, on its amorous couch, the flesh
Is illuminated by the broad radiance of its clear breasts;
Say! If there were nothing but these joys in the world
They must be welcomed to live, madly.
O muscles that I move with impetuosity!
O rhythms of my blood that lighten my whole being
What fever you drive in your course!
Now my brain revives in turn
And seeks and strains to discover, perhaps,
In the deep universe a little truth.
And I tremble and exult to hear the mystery
Speak like someone who would speak underground,
And the ground beats, and my red and contracted heart
Crushes against this ground to hear still better.
Emile Verhaeren
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-ardent-life-emile-verhaeren/