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(To M. de Bonald)
Thus, when among the tempests,
On the burning summit of Sinai,
Long ago the greatest of prophets
Engraved the tablets of Judah;
During that sublime communion,
A cloud covered the peak
Of the mount inaccessible to eyes,
And, trembling at the thunderbolts,
Judah, lying in the dust,
Saw its laws descend from the heavens.
Thus from celebrated sophists
Dispelling false lights,
You draw from the heart of darkness
Dazzling truths.
The veil that covered the august mysteries
Of the first laws,
Is torn and falls at your voice;
And you follow your assured path,
Up to that sacred source
Where the world has drawn its laws.
Seated on the immutable base
Of eternal truth,
You see with an unalterable eye
The phases of humanity.
Shaken from their ancient hinges,
Empires, republics
Collapse into scattered debris;
You laugh at the terrors we feel:
Wherever we see men,
A God appears to your gaze!
In vain by some false system,
A false system is destroyed;
By disorder into order itself,
The moral universe is led.
And as around a single star,
The earth, in its oblique course,
Traces its path through the air;
Thus, by a more beautiful law,
Thus eternal justice
Is the pivot of the universe!
But what! while genius
Carries you so far from our eyes,
The cowardly clamors of envy
Follow you even into the heavens!
Believe me, disdain to descend from them;
Do not stoop to hear
These detracting murmurs.
Pursue your sublime career,
Pursue it; contempt for the vulgar
Is the apanage of great hearts.
Object of its frivolous loves,
Have you not seen it in turn
Forge for itself fragile idols
That it adores and breaks in a day?
Have you not seen its inconstancy
Extinguish the sacred torches
Of hereditary belief?
Burn what its fathers adored,
And give the name of lights
To the thick night of tombs?
Shaking off its ancient reins,
But flattered by other tyrants,
All bruised by the weight of its chains,
Do you hear it cry: Liberty?
In its sacrilegious whims,
Do you see it, giving to its vices
The names of all the virtues;
Dragging Socrates to the gallows,
To make, in impious temples,
The apotheosis of Anytus?
If to caress its weakness,
Under your flattering brushes,
You adorn with the name of wisdom
The lessons of its corrupters,
You would see its degraded hands,
Tearing withered palms
From some dishonored brow,
Scatter them along your path.
And, changing glory into outrage,
Offer you an abhorred triumph!
But far from abandoning the arena
Where your youth has fought,
You know that the esteem of vice
Is an outrage to virtue!
You honor yourself with so much hatred,
You pity those weak hearts that are carried away
By the course of their misguided century;
And alone against the rapid flood,
You walk with an intrepid step
Toward the goal that glory has shown!
Like a torrent, son of the storm,
Rolling down from the mountain tops,
If it encounters on its passage
An oak, the pride of the valleys;
It grows angry, it foams, it roars,
It presses with the folds of its wave
The tree vainly threatened;
But standing amid the ruins,
The oak with deep roots
Remains; and the river has passed!
You therefore, from the contempt of your age
Without ever being rebuffed,
Temper anew your manly courage
In the waves of adversity!
For this struggle that is ending,
Let truth be your sword,
Justice your shield.
Go! disdain other armor;
And if you receive wounds,
We will cover them with laurel!
Do you see in the ancient arena,
Around the steeds and chariots,
Spurting the Olympic dust
That hides them from our eyes?
Thus in its course genius,
Through the clouds of envy
Walks long surrounded;
But at the end of the race,
From the waves of unworthy dust
It emerges victorious and crowned.
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-genius-alphonse-de-lamartine/