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To Mr. Ernest Legouvé
Rapt in the clear memories of the water that slakes
The earth, I conceived this song of the River.
Behind the endless horizon, farther, farther,
The mountains, on their summits that no witness
Has seen, condense the water the wind sends them.
Hence the glacier, ceaselessly grown, but which grinds
At its base and melts while gnawing the hard rock.
Lower down, not far from the green firs, the pure laughter
Of springs runs among the iridescent mosses
And over the fine sand taken from worn rocks.
From the ravine over there another current emerges,
And a thousand more. Thus the torrent swells
That descends toward the plain and begins the River.
But the water runs too brutal and with too new an ardor
To fertilize the soil. On these torn banks,
Hawthorns, lavender and thyme, golden brooms
Find shelter only in the cracks of the stones.
Now the torrent strikes below the barriers
Of sand and rocks dragged along by itself.
This is the plain. It loses itself in winding paths
That calm its fury. And a few small trees
Follow the water that murmurs over the sandstones and marbles.
These hills, last eddies of the giant mounts,
Frozen waves of granite flowing into oceans,
These slopes, now green, are speckled with spots
White and russet that move. They are the cows
Or nearer, the small livestock. The tinkling
Of the little bells mingles with the drowsy murmur
Of the water.
The pointed poplars love the flat
Banks. Already their passive rows
Escort here and there the calm and strong River.
The fields are possessed by the powerful. Along the bank
Those who have no hope of harvests go in throngs
To await the unforeseen that the flowing water brings:
Flecks of gold, sapphires, diamonds and rubies,
Which the rocks, after so many storms endured,
Abandon from the depth of their mined mass,
Under the caressing influence of the cold, obstinate water.
How much washed sand, how many promised dreams,
For a little gold, at last, to remain at the bottom of the sieve!
Take your staff, seeker! The town is not near,
And sidelong glances have weighed your satchel.
Others, hard at work, sow in a circle the leads
Of the great nets; the quivering silver of the fish
Swells the gray mesh, bringing the fresh
And insipid smell that clings to the gear of fishing.
But the gain is precarious, and more than one skimmer
Goes down, bloated corpse, into the sleep-bringing flood.
The river carries everything away, moreover. For with his axe
The woodcutter, shearer of mountains, tears
The firs from the heights, which he entrusts to the current;
And, lower down, the industrious sawmill takes
These trees, and, the River still being an accomplice,
Cuts them up, despite their resounding revolt.
Then the plain with its harvests, then the hamlets
From which come to drink, at the bank, the animals:
Oxen, horses; while upstream, the washerwomen
Make their beaters clack on the linen and the stones.
Or else plunge their pearly arms into the running water,
And, showing their bare feet, the skirt tucked up short,
Sing a song in which the king marries them.
Song, bare feet, white arms, make this lad in a smock
Distracted, let his tired horse go alone,
Smoking, chest in the water, along the curves of the ford.
These leaves, in full current, cover some island
One would like to possess, to dream there in peace.
Then hills with irregular squares,
Small woods; nearer the water, the poplars
And the willows. The River, widened, less rapid,
Fills with water lilies, with rushes. In the fluid gold
Of evening, the midges waltz.
But, drawing near,
Now the slopes rise. Rocks
Often interrupt the sloping crops.
All the stony country, where the River meanders,
Nourishes, poor and mossy, the bramble and the bandit.
The current, strangled in the ravines, leaps
On the rocks, or else sleeps in the holes it hollows.
But the water does not interrupt its adventurous course
Despite so much work and so many sleeps. Here is
The breach opened on the horizon darkened
By the water’s dust. The bed of flat stone
Ends abruptly, and the flood, a heavy sheet, bursts
Into a perpetual roaring. Below,
The rocks scattered as after battles
Of titans, break the water on their hard edges.
In the distance, everything is wet. The audacity of the luxuriant
Greenery frames and often breaks the brilliance
Of the foamy fall.
Here the flat country
Still spreads its meadows, its harvests. Rivers,
Coming from who knows where, capricious, proud,
Run through the fields, believing they will live forever
In the flowering adornment of their young course.
But the victorious River stops them in passing,
And silences that laughter in its vast and wise course.
On the banks the hamlets succeed one another, alike.
Then, here is industry with its discordant awakenings.
The nightingales, troubled by the noise and the soot
Of the factories, go off toward the cool woods that the rain
Wipes and that in the morning the lily of the valley perfumes.
The sun still shines but man keeps watch.
Now he has built quays and locks;
And the ashen willows, mistrustful of these ruses,
And the proud poplars do not go that far.
These profaned hills, from which the wolf went away,
Become encrusted with white houses and factories
That raise gravely their tall brick chimneys.
On the tranquil River, brightening the scene,
The young men, strong and handsome, who tame the water,
Forgetful, as they row, of servile intrigue,
Go off, joyful, with women.
This is the town,
The immense town with its hospitable cries,
The water flows between the correct quays. Stairways
Lead to the glaucous depths of suicide.
On the mossy wall a large ring oxidizes,
For the one who drowns, inaccessible hope.
Capricious and black line on the greenish
Evening, the houses, the palaces in tiers
Are constellated. At the port, the sales, the brokerages
Are finished. The day falls, and the bats
Fly heavily, uttering little cries.
These old quays forgotten on their disjointed stones
Support gray houses with pointed roofs.
There, rags dry that with their thin arms
Poor women have rinsed. Below, rats.
The deep flood, squeezed by the massive piers
Of the bridge, runs more ferocious, and the passive stones
Let themselves be crumbled by the water, tranquilly.
One sees fewer stars light up in the firmament
Than lights on the quays and in the streets
Full of the noise of voices, of gay balls, coursed through
By carriages.
Alone, the River does not laugh
Under the pot-bellied and heavy barges. Moreover, below,
The sewer vomits its black water with frightful foam,
Rank by rank, all these floods, sons of distant summits.
Dogs, rotten cats that the current carries away,
Stain without effect in the River so great
Whose surface the moon, silver eye, spangles.
But what does human life matter to the water that passes,
The garbage, the immense crowd and the gay balls?
The water does not linger over these things.
The fords
Are broken, now, downstream from the town.
Man has dredged the bed of the River, more docile
Since it is so wide and so deep.
The sea
To the tarred boats leaves a bitter perfume
That speaks of distant lands where the wind leads.
The River, heedless of human industry,
Continues through the countryside. The night
Advances triumphant and constellated, to the sound
Of the leaves that the cool air pearls with dew.
Then, in the morning, another town set
In the plain, a jewel of pearl on green
Velvet, whose heavy folds all these hills imitate;
Farms with great roofs, low and mossy, crouching
At the edge of the endless meadows where magpies flutter,
Riches that in a low voice this pensive peasant
Evaluates while whipping his old wheezy mule.
The River widens always, so much that the banks
Lose toward the horizon their fleeting lines.
The lowered hills, the agitated sky, the murmuring
And salty air, proclaim that the sea
Is there, implacable term to the mad expedition
Of the water, which toward the warm sky had escaped.
The sea demands everything, capricious, and then, sometimes
Refuses the tributes of the River, silt, wood,
Corpses, broken rocks, that to the distant mountains,
To the fat lands, to the hamlets, to the vast plains,
It has stolen, wanting to sate the sea.
And everything piles up, an obstacle to the River. Proud man
Finds here the distinct debris of each year,
In obscure times when his race was not yet born.
All the country is gay. From afar the song of the cocks
Splits the mist. Here are the basins and the docks,
The cries of the capstans, the moored boats
From which a thousand porters remove the goods,
Bales, barrels, metal bars, heaps of wheat.
In the smoky taverns, the sailors at table
Threaten each other, with exotic oaths.
One finds all the distant fruits in the shops.
The water of the River stops, a little troubled, before
Losing itself, unnamed, in the moving infinite.
It is like a battle in regular line:
Squadrons at a gallop, raising the dust,
The waves of the sea arrive with great noise,
White with foam, having victorious airs, and then
Return, efforts that the River repels
With its little audacious waves of fresh water.
The sea flees, but carries away and disperses forever,
Rank by rank, all these floods, sons of distant summits.
*
Haughty Muse. Muse with clear eyes, be blessed!
Despite your long disdains, my song is finished;
For you have consoled me for all the mocking noises;
You have shown me, among my best memories,
Gleams to tint the water that runs and warbles,
The cool water where, toward evening, the swallow wets itself.
And I have followed its floods to the great sea.
Let friends read this tranquil and proud song among themselves,
In moments of fever and on days of trial
Let one lull one’s heart to the murmurs of the River.
Charles Cros
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-river-charles-cros/