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Thus, forever driven toward new shores,
Carried into eternal night with no return,
Can we never upon the ocean of the ages
Cast anchor for a single day?
O lake! the year has scarcely finished its course,
And near the beloved waves she was to see again,
Look! I come alone to sit upon this stone
Where you saw her sit!
You moaned like this beneath these deep rocks,
Thus you broke upon their torn flanks,
Thus the wind tossed the foam of your waves
Onto her adored feet.
One evening, do you remember? we sailed in silence;
Far off, on the wave and beneath the skies, nothing was heard
But the sound of the rowers striking in cadence
Your harmonious waves.
Suddenly accents unknown to the earth
Struck the echoes from the charmed shore;
The wave was attentive, and the voice dear to me
Let fall these words:
“O time! suspend your flight, and you, favorable hours!
Suspend your course:
Let us savor the swift delights
Of the fairest of our days!
“Enough unhappy beings here below implore you,
Flow, flow for them;
Take with their days the cares that devour them;
Forget the happy.
“But I ask in vain for a few more moments,
Time escapes me and flees;
I say to this night: Be slower; and the dawn
Will dispel the night.
“Let us love, then, let us love! of the fugitive hour,
Let us hasten, let us enjoy!
Man has no harbor, time has no shore;
It flows, and we pass by!”
Jealous time, can it be that these moments of rapture,
When love pours happiness upon us in long waves,
Fly far from us with the same speed
As the days of misfortune?
What! can we not at least fix their trace?
What! gone forever! what! entirely lost!
This time that gave them, this time that erases them,
Will never give them back to us!
Eternity, nothingness, past, dark abysses,
What do you do with the days you engulf?
Speak: will you return to us those sublime ecstasies
That you snatch from us?
O lake! silent rocks! caves! dark forest!
You, whom time spares or can make young again,
Keep from this night, keep, beautiful nature,
At least the memory!
May it be in your rest, may it be in your storms,
Beautiful lake, and in the aspect of your smiling hills,
And in these black pines, and in these wild rocks
That hang over your waters.
May it be in the zephyr that shivers and passes,
In the sounds of your shores repeated by your shores,
In the star with the silver brow that whitens your surface
With its soft lights.
May the wind that moans, the reed that sighs,
May the light perfumes of your balmy air,
May all that one hears, sees, or breathes,
All say: They have loved!
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-lake-alphonse-de-lamartine/