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On the sounding shore where the sea of Sorrento
Unrolls its blue waves at the feet of the orange tree,
There is, near the path, beneath the fragrant hedge,
A little stone, narrow, indifferent
To the stranger’s distracted steps!
The wallflower hides a single name beneath its clusters.
A name that no echo has ever repeated!
Only sometimes a passerby, stopping,
Reading the age and date as he parts the grass,
And feeling a few tears run in his eyes,
Says: She was sixteen! It is very early to die!
But why drag me back to these scenes of the past?
Let the wind moan and the wave murmur;
Come back, come back, O my sad thoughts!
I want to dream and not to weep!
Says: She was sixteen! – Yes, sixteen! and that age
Had never shone on a more charming brow!
And never had all the brilliance of that burning shore
Been reflected in a more loving eye!
I alone see her again, as thought
In the soul where nothing dies has left her living;
Living! as in the hour when her eyes on mine,
Prolonging on the sea our first conversations,
Her black hair given to the wind that unlooses it,
And the shadow of the wandering sail on her cheek,
She listened to the song of the nocturnal fisherman,
Inhaled the freshness of the fragrant breeze,
Showed me in the sky the blooming moon
Like a flower of the night whose dawn rejoices,
And the silvery foam; and said to me: Why
Does everything shine thus in the air and in me?
Never these fields of azure sown with so many flames,
Never these golden sands where the waves come to die,
These mountains whose summits tremble in the depths of the heavens,
These gulfs crowned with silent woods,
These gleams on the coast, and these fields on the waves,
Had stirred my senses with such vague delights!
Why, like this evening, have I never dreamed?
Has a star also risen in my heart?
And you, son of the morning! say, to these nights so beautiful
Did the nights of your country, without me, resemble them?
Then looking at her mother seated beside us
She laid her forehead on her knees to sleep.
But why drag me back to these scenes of the past?
Let the wind moan and the wave murmur;
Come back, come back, O my sad thoughts!
I want to dream and not to weep!
How pure her eye was, and her lip candid!
How her sky flooded her soul with light!
The beautiful lake of Nemi, which no breath ripples,
Has less transparency and limpidity!
In that soul, before her, one saw her thoughts,
Her eyelids, never lowered over her beautiful eyes,
Did not veil her gaze filled with innocence,
No care had left its crease on her brow;
Everything frolicked in her; and that young smile,
Which later on the mouth expires with sadness,
On her half-open lip was always floating,
Like a pure rainbow on a radiant day!
No shadow veiled that ravishing face,
That ray had not passed through any cloud!
Her carefree step, hesitant, balanced,
Floated like a free wave where the day is cradled,
Or ran just to run; and her silvery voice,
Limpid and pure echo of her childlike soul,
Music of that soul in which everything seemed to sing,
Cheered even the air that heard it rise!
But why drag me back to these scenes of the past?
Let the wind moan and the wave murmur;
Come back, come back, O my sad thoughts!
I want to dream and not to weep!
My image was graven in her heart the first;
Like light in the eye that opens in the morning;
She looked at nothing else after that day;
From the hour she loved, the universe was love!
She confused me with her own life,
Saw everything in my soul; and I was part
Of that enchanted world that floated before her eyes,
Of the happiness of earth and the hope of heaven.
She no longer thought of time, of distance,
The hour alone absorbed her whole existence;
Before me that life was without memory,
One evening of those beautiful days was all the future!
She confided in sweet nature
That smiled upon us; in pure prayer
Which she went, her heart full of joy, and not of tears,
To the altar she loved to pour out with her flowers;
And her hand led me to the steps of her temple,
And, like a humble child, I followed her example,
And her voice said to me softly: Pray with me!
For I do not understand even heaven without you!
But why drag me back to these scenes of the past?
Let the wind moan and the wave murmur;
Come back, come back, O my sad thoughts!
I want to dream and not to weep!
See, in its basin, the water of a living spring
Round itself like a lake beneath its narrow bank,
Blue and clear, sheltered from the wind that will run
And from the burning ray that could dry it up!
A white swan swimming on the limpid surface,
Plunging there its neck that the ripple envelops,
Adorns without tarnishing the liquid mirror,
And rocks there amid the stars of evening;
But if, taking flight toward new springs,
It beats the trembling wave with its damp wings,
The sky fades in the bosom of the water that darkens,
The plumage falls in great flakes, and tarnishes it,
As if the vulture, enemy of its race,
Had sown the trace of its death on the waves;
And the dazzling azure of that enchanted lake
Is no more than a dark wave where the sand has risen!
Thus, when I left, everything trembled in that soul;
The ray went out; and its dying flame
Rose back into the sky never to return;
She did not wait for a second future,
She did not languish from doubt into hope,
And did not dispute her life with suffering;
She drank the cup of sorrow in a single draft,
In her first tear she drowned her heart!
And, like the bird, less pure and less beautiful than she,
That at evening puts its neck under its wing to sleep,
She wrapped herself in a mute despair,
And fell asleep too; but, alas! far from evening!
But why drag me back to these scenes of the past?
Let the wind moan and the wave murmur;
Come back, come back, O my sad thoughts!
I want to dream and not to weep!
She has slept fifteen years in her bed of clay,
And nothing weeps more over her last refuge;
And swift oblivion, second shroud of the dead,
Has covered the path that led to those shores;
No one visits that effaced stone anymore,
No one thinks of it or prays there!… except my thought,
When, climbing back up the flood of my past days,
I ask my heart for all those who are no longer there!
And when, my eyes floating on cherished imprints,
I weep in my sky for so many extinguished stars!
She was the first, and her gentle gleam
Still lights my heart with a pious and tender day!
But why drag me back to these scenes of the past?
Let the wind moan and the wave murmur;
Come back, come back, O my sad thoughts!
I want to dream and not to weep!
A thorny shrub, with pale verdure,
Is the only monument that nature made for her;
Beaten by sea winds, calcined by the sun,
Like a funeral regret rooted in the heart,
It lives in the rock without giving it shade;
The dust of the road whitens its foliage,
It creeps near the ground, where its bent branches
Are always cut back by the teeth of the kids;
A flower, in spring, like a flake of snow
Floats there a day or two; but the wind that besieges it
Strips its petals before it has spread its scent,
Like life, before it has charmed the heart!
A bird of tenderness and melancholy
Perches there to sing on the bending branch!
Oh! say, flower that life has made so soon wither,
Is there not a land where everything must bloom again?…
Climb back, climb back to those past hours!
Your sad memories help me to sigh!
Go where my soul goes! Go, O my thoughts,
My heart is full, I want to weep!
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-first-regret-alphonse-de-lamartine/