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She takes her little nap in the middle of the day;
For the child has more need of dreams than man,
This earth is so ugly when one comes from heaven!
The child seeks to see again Cherubino, Ariel,
His comrades, Puck, Titania, the fairies,
And his hands, when he sleeps, are warmed by God.
Oh! how surprised we would be if we saw,
Deep in this sacred sleep, full of rays,
Those paradises opened in the shadow, and those passages
Of stars that signal to children to be good,
Those apparitions, those dazzlements!
So, at the hour when the fires of the sun are calming,
When all nature listens and collects itself,
Toward noon, when the nests fall silent, when the leaf
Most trembling forgets for an instant to quiver,
Jeanne has this amiable habit of sleeping;
And the mother for a moment breathes and rests,
For one grows weary, even in serving a rose.
Her lovely little bare feet whose step is unsure
Sleep; and her cradle, surrounded by a vague azure
As a halo surrounds an immortal,
Seems a cloud made of lace;
One thinks, seeing her in that fresh cradle,
To see a rosy glow at the bottom of a flounce;
One gazes at her, one laughs, one feels sadness flee,
And she is a star, having in addition smallness;
The shadow, in love with her, seems to adore her;
The wind holds its breath and does not dare to breathe.
Suddenly, in the humble and chaste maternal alcove,
Pouring out all the morning she has in her pupil,
She opens her eyelid, stretches a charming arm,
Stirs one foot, then the other, and, so divinely
That brows in the azure lean down to hear her,
She coos… – Then, in her tenderest voice,
Covering with her eyes the child whom God makes radiant,
Seeking the sweetest name she can give
To her joy, to her angel in bloom, to her chimera:
– So you’re awake, horror! her mother says to her.
Victor Hugo
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-nap-victor-hugo/