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The cup of my days is broken while still full;
My life escapes from my breast with every breath;
Neither kisses nor sighs can stay it;
And the wing of death, on the bronze that mourns me,
Strikes my final hour in broken sounds;
Should I groan? Should I sing?…
Let us sing, since my fingers are still on the lyre;
Let us sing, since death, as with the swan, inspires me
On the shores of another world a melodious cry.
It is a happy omen given by my genius,
If our soul is nothing but love and harmony,
That a divine song be its farewell!
The lyre, breaking, gives a more sublime sound;
The lamp that goes out suddenly revives,
And shines with a purer brightness before expiring;
The swan sees the sky at its final hour,
Man alone, casting his gaze backward,
Counts his days to weep over them.
What then are days worth, that one should weep for them?
A sun, a sun; an hour, and then an hour;
The one that comes resembles the one that flees;
What one brings us, another takes away:
Work, rest, sorrow, and sometimes a dream,
That is the day, then comes the night.
Ah! let him weep, he whose relentless hands
Clinging like ivy to the debris of years,
Sees with the future his hope collapse!
As for me, who have taken no root on earth,
I go without effort, like the light grass
That the evening breeze carries away.
The poet is like the birds of passage
Who build no nests on the shore,
Who never perch on the branches of the woods;
Nonchalantly cradled on the current of the wave,
They pass singing far from the shores; and the world
Knows nothing of them but their voice.
Never has any hand on the sonorous string
Guided in its play my still novice hand.
Man does not teach what heaven inspires;
The stream does not learn to flow down its slope,
The eagle to cleave the air with an independent wing,
The bee to compose its honey.
The bronze resounding in its high dwelling,
Under the sacred hammer sings and weeps in turn,
To celebrate marriage, birth or death;
I was like that bronze refined by flame,
And every passion, striking my soul,
Drew from it a sublime chord.
Thus during the night the Aeolian harp,
Mingling with the sounds of water its aerial lament,
Resounds by itself at the breath of the zephyrs.
The traveler stops, astonished to hear it,
He listens, he admires and cannot understand
From where these divine sighs come.
My harp was often watered with tears,
But tears are for us the celestial dew;
Under an always pure sky the heart does not ripen:
In the crushed cup the juice of the vine flows,
And the balm, wilted under the foot that tramples it,
Spreads its perfumes on our steps.
God with a burning breath had formed my soul;
Everything it approached caught fire from its flame:
Fatal gift! and I die for having loved too much!
Everything I touched has been reduced to dust:
Thus the fire of heaven fallen on the heather
Goes out when all is consumed.
But time? – It is no more. – But glory? – Ah! what does it matter,
That echo of a vain sound, which one century brings to another?
That name, brilliant toy of posterity?
You who promise it the empire of the future,
Listen to this chord that my lyre is about to give!…
………………………………………..
The winds have already carried it away!
Ah! give death a less frivolous hope.
What! the memory of that sound which flies away
Around a vain tomb would still resound?
That breath of a dying man, what! that is glory?
But you who promise time to his memory,
Mortals, do you possess two days?
I call the gods to witness! since I have breathed,
My lips have never pronounced without a smile
That great name invented by human delirium;
The more I pressed that word, the more I found it empty,
And I rejected it, like an arid husk
That our lips press in vain.
In the sterile hope of an uncertain glory,
Man, in passing, delivers to the current that carries him
A name weakened from day to day in its course;
The wave of time toys with that brilliant debris;
From century to century, it floats, advances, runs aground
In the abysses of oblivion.
I throw one more name to those shoreless waves;
At the mercy of winds, of sky, let it sink or swim,
Shall I be greater for it? Why? it is only a name.
The swan that flies to the eternal vaults,
Friends! does it ask whether the shadow of its wings
Still floats on a vile turf?
But why did you sing? – Ask Philomela
Why, during the nights, her sweet voice mingles
With the sweet sound of streams rolling under the shade!
I sang, my friends, as man breathes,
As the bird moans, as the wind sighs,
As water murmurs in flowing.
To love, to pray, to sing, that is all my life.
Mortals! of all those goods that here below man envies,
At the hour of farewells I regret nothing;
Nothing but the ardent sigh that leaps toward heaven,
The ecstasy of the lyre, or the amorous silence
Of a heart pressed against mine.
At the feet of beauty to feel one’s lyre tremble,
To see from chord to chord the harmonious delirium
Flow with the sound and pass into her breast,
To make rain the tears of those eyes one adores,
As at the breath of winds the tears of dawn
Fall from a cup too full;
To see the plaintive glance of the modest virgin
Turn sadly toward the celestial vault,
As if to fly away with the sound that flees,
Then falling back on you full of a chaste flame,
Under its lowered lashes let her soul shine,
Like a trembling fire in the night;
To see pass over her brow the shadow of her thought,
Speech fail her oppressed mouth,
And from that long silence finally hear come out
That word which resounds even into heaven itself,
That word, the word of gods and men: … I love you!
That is what is worth a sigh.
A sigh! a regret! useless word!
On the wing of death, my soul flies to heaven;
I go where their instinct carries our desires;
I go where the gaze sees hope shine;
I go where the sound goes that leaps from my lute;
Where all my sighs have gone!
Like the bird that sees in the funereal shadows,
Faith, that eye of the soul, has pierced my darkness;
Its prophetic instinct has revealed my fate.
To the fields of the future how many times my soul,
Leaping to heaven on wings of flame,
Has it outrun death?
Do not inscribe a name on my dark dwelling.
Do not burden my shadow with the weight of a monument:
For a little sand, alas! I am not jealous.
Leave me only barely enough space
So that the unfortunate who passes over my tomb
May there place his two knees.
Often in the secret of shadow and silence,
From the grass of a coffin prayer leaps forth
And finds hope beside death.
With foot on a tomb one holds less to the earth;
The horizon is vaster, and the soul, lighter,
Mounts to heaven with less effort.
Break, give to the winds, to the waves, to the flame,
This lute that has only one sound to answer my soul!
The lute of the Seraphim will tremble under my fingers.
Soon, living like them on an immortal delirium,
I shall guide, perhaps, to the chords of my lyre,
Heavens suspended on my voice.
Soon! … But death’s heavy and mute hand
Has just touched the string: it breaks, and gives
A plaintive and dull sound in the vague air.
My frozen lute is silent … Friends, take yours;
And may my soul still pass from one world to the other
To the sound of your sacred concerts!
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-dying-poet-alphonse-de-lamartine/