The Ballet of the Hours

Poem by Gérard De Nerval Period 19th century

(The god Pan speaks:)

Hours are flowers, one after another blooming
In the eternal marriage of the night and the day;
So we must gather them as we gather roses
And give them only to love.

As of the lightning flash, nothing of the hour remains
But what time has just given to devouring nothingness;
In its swift flight embrace the best one,
Always the one about to strike.

And hold it fast according to your desire,
As the only moment your soul ever dreamed;
As if the happiness of the longest life
Were in the hour that slips away.

You will always find, from the first hour
To the hour of night that speaks twelve times,
The vines, on the hills, flooded with light,
The myrtles in the shade of the woods.

Love, drink, the rest is full of vain things;
Wine, this new blood, poured on the lip,
Rejuvenates the other blood that ages in your veins
And gives forgetfulness of the past.

Let the hour of love be followed by another,
Savor the glance that comes from beauty;
To be alone is death! To be two is life!
Love is immortality!

Gérard de Nerval

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