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La muse
Since the sun, in the immense horizon,
Has crossed Cancer on its flaming axis,
Happiness has left me, and I wait in silence
For the hour when my beloved friend will call me.
Alas! for a long time his dwelling has been deserted;
Nothing there seems alive from the beautiful days of old.
Alone, I still come, covered by my veil,
To lay my burning forehead on his half-open door,
Like a weeping widow at a child’s tomb.
The poet
Hail to my faithful friend!
Hail, my glory and my love!
The best and the most cherished
Is the one we find upon return.
Opinion and avarice
Come for a time to carry me away.
Hail, my mother and my nurse!
Hail, hail consoler!
Open your arms, I come to sing.
The muse
Why, thirsting heart, heart weary of hope,
Do you flee so often to return so late?
What do you go seeking, if not some chance?
And what do you bring back, if not some suffering?
What do you do far from me, when I wait until day?
You follow a pale flash in a deep night.
Nothing will remain to you from your worldly pleasures
But a powerless contempt for our honest love.
Your study is empty when I arrive;
While at this balcony, anxious and pensive,
I watch in a dream the walls of your garden,
You give yourself in shadow to your evil fate.
Some proud beauty holds you in her chain,
And you let this poor verbena die
Whose last branches, in happier times,
Were to be watered by the tears of your eyes.
This sad greenery is my living symbol;
Friend, from your forgetfulness we shall both die,
And its light perfume, like the bird that flies,
With my memory will flee into the heavens.
The poet
When I passed through the meadow,
I saw, this evening, on the path,
A trembling and withered flower,
A pale eglantine flower.
A green bud beside it
Was swaying on the shrub;
I saw a new flower appear;
The youngest was the most beautiful:
Man is thus, always new.
The muse
Alas! always a man, alas! always tears!
Always dusty feet and sweat on the brow!
Always dreadful combats and bloody weapons;
The heart may lie in vain, the wound is deep.
Alas! in all countries, always the same life:
To covet, to regret, to take and to hold out the hand;
Always the same actors and the same comedy,
And, whatever human hypocrisy has invented,
Nothing true beneath it but the human skeleton.
Alas! my beloved, you are no longer a poet.
Nothing awakens your mute lyre any more;
You drown your heart in an inconstant dream;
And you do not know that the love of woman
Changes and dissipates into tears the treasures of your soul,
And that God counts tears more than blood.
The poet
When I crossed the valley,
A bird was singing on its nest.
Its little ones, its dear brood,
Had just died in the night.
Yet it sang the dawn;
O my Muse, do not weep!
To one who loses all, God still remains,
God above, hope here below.
The muse
And what will you find, the day when misery
Brings you back alone to the paternal hearth?
When your trembling hands wipe the dust
From this poor retreat that you think you have forgotten,
With what face will you come, into your own dwelling,
To seek a little calm and hospitality?
A voice will be there to cry at every hour:
What have you done with your life and your freedom?
Do you think one forgets as much as one wishes?
Do you think that in seeking yourself you will find yourself?
Of your heart or of you, which is the Poet?
It is your heart, and your heart will not answer you.
Love will have broken it; deadly passions
Will have turned it to stone through contact with the wicked;
You will feel of it only frightful remains,
Which will still stir, like those of serpents.
O heaven! who will help you? what shall I myself do,
When he who can do all forbids that I love you,
And when my golden wings, trembling in spite of me,
Carry me to him to save me from you?
Poor child! our loves were not threatened,
When in the woods of Auteuil, lost in your thoughts,
Under the green chestnut trees and white poplars,
I teased you in the evening with indolent turns.
Ah! I was young then and a nymph, and the dryads
Half-opened the bark of the birches to see me,
And the tears that flowed during our walks
Fell, pure as gold, into the crystal of the waters.
What have you done, my lover, with the days of your youth?
Who has picked my fruit from my enchanted tree?
Alas! your flowering cheek pleased the goddess
Who carries in her hands strength and health.
The tears of your mad eyes have paled it;
Like your beauty, you will lose your virtue.
And I who will love you as a unique friend,
When the irritated gods take your genius from me,
If I fall from the heavens, what will you answer me?
The poet
Since the bird of the woods still flutters and sings
On the branch where its eggs are broken in the nest;
Since the flower of the fields, half-open at dawn,
Seeing on the lawn another flower bloom,
Bends without a murmur and falls with the night,
Since deep in the forests, under roofs of greenery,
One hears dead wood crack on the path,
And since, crossing immortal nature,
Man has been unable to find any science that endures,
But to walk always and always forget;
Since, even to the rocks, all changes to dust;
Since all dies this evening to live again tomorrow;
Since murder and war are a fertilizer;
Since on a tomb one sees rise from the earth
The sacred blade of grass that gives us bread;
O Muse! what do I care for death or life?
I love, and I want to grow pale; I love and I want to suffer;
I love, and for a kiss I give my genius;
I love, and I want to feel on my emaciated cheek
Streaming a source impossible to dry up.
I love, and I want to sing joy and idleness,
My mad experience and my cares of a day,
And I want to tell and repeat endlessly
That after having sworn to live without a mistress,
I have sworn to live and die of love.
Strip off before all the pride that devours you,
Heart swollen with bitterness and that has believed itself closed.
Love, and you will be reborn; make yourself a flower to bloom.
After having suffered, one must suffer again;
One must love endlessly, after having loved.
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-the-august-night-alfred-de-musset/