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Do you see how the peaceful wave
Comes to die upon the shore!
Do you see the fickle zephyr
Ripple, with an insensible breath,
The wave it loves to travel over!
Let us climb into the light boat
That my hand guides without effort,
And of this solitary gulf
Let us timidly skim the edges.
Already the shore flees far from us.
While with a fearful hand
You hold the docile oar,
Bent over the noisy blade
In the breast of the trembling wave
I trace a rapid furrow.
God! what freshness we breathe!
Plunged into the breast of Thetis,
The sun has yielded empire
To the pale queen of the nights.
The breast of half-closed flowers
Opens, and with fragrant vapors
At this moment fills the air;
And the light breeze of evening
With the sweetest perfumes of the earth
In turn perfumes the seas.
What songs resound upon these waves?
What songs burst forth upon these shores?
Of these two concerts that unite
The echo prolongs the harmonies.
Not daring to trust the stars,
The fisherman, folding his sails,
Salutes, in singing, his dwelling.
While a mad youth
Sends to the sky cries of joy,
And celebrates his happy return.
But already the thicker shadow
Falls, and darkens the vast seas;
The shore fades, the noise ceases,
Silence occupies the air.
It is the hour when melancholy
Sits pensive and withdrawn
On the silent shores of the seas,
And, meditating on the ruins,
Contemplates on the slope of the hills
This palace, these deserted temples.
O of liberty old and holy fatherland!
Land once fertile in sublime virtues!
Under unworthy Caesars now enslaved,
Your empire has fallen! your heroes are no more!
But in your breast the enlarged soul
Believes it breathes their genius on their monuments,
As one still breathes in an abolished temple
The majesty of the god with which it was filled.
But let us not question your generous ashes,
Old Romans! proud Catos! manes of the two Brutus!
Let us go ask again of these fallen walls
Sweeter memories, happier shadows,
Horace, in this fresh retreat,
In a refuge embellished
By pleasure and genius,
Fled the pomps of the court;
Propertius visited Cynthia there,
And under the gaze of Delia
Tibullus modulated there the sighs of love.
Farther on, here is the asylum where Tasso came to sing,
When, victim at once of genius and of fate,
Wandering through the universe, without refuge and without port,
Pity gathered up his illustrious disgrace.
Not far from the same shores, later he came to die;
Glory called him, he arrives, he succumbs:
The palm that awaits him seems to flee before him,
And his late laurel shades only his tomb.
Hill of Baya! poetic sojourn!
Voluptuous valley inhabited in turn
By all that was great in the world,
You no longer resound with glory or with love.
Not a voice that answers me,
But the plaintive sound of this wave,
Or the awakened echo of the debris around!
Thus all changes, thus all passes;
Thus we ourselves pass,
Alas! without leaving more trace
Than this boat in which we glide
On this sea where all is erased.
Alphonse de Lamartine
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-bay-of-baya-alphonse-de-lamartine/