The Sails

Poem by Alphonse De Lamartine Period 19th century

When I was young and proud and opened my wings,
The wings of my soul to all the winds of the seas,
The sails carried my thought away with them,
And my dreams floated on all the bitter waves.

I saw in that haze where the horizon drowns
Rising all green with vine and jasmine
Continents of life and islands of joy
Where glory and love beckoned me with their hands.

I envied each ship that whitened the foam,
Happy to aspire to the unknown shore,
And now, seated at the edge of the smoking cape,
I have crossed these waves and I have returned from them.

And I still love these seas once so beloved,
No longer as the field of my cherished dreams,
But as a field of death where my scattered wings
Show me everywhere the debris of myself.

This reef broke me, this shore rose up deadly,
My fortune sank in this deceptive calm;
The lightning fell on me here from the celestial arch
And each of these waves rolls a little of my heart.

Alphonse de Lamartine

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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