Français
Español
Italiano
Deutsch
Português
And this one, powerful, compact, pale and ruddy,
Stirs, in its hands of water, frost and sunlight;
And that one spreads out, between its brown banks,
A garden dark and clear for the games of the moon;
And that other one plunges through the desert,
To suspend its waves on the lips of the sea
And such another, whose glimmers pierce the mists
And suddenly light up,
Figures a Wahallah of glass and gold,
Where hairy gnomes guard the old treasures.
In Touraine, such a river is a mantle of glory.
Their names? The Ural, the Oder, the Nile, the Rhine, the Loire.
Gestures of Gods, cries of heroes, march of Kings,
You solemnize them with the noise of your exploits.
Their banks are great with your pride; vast palaces
Lift there even to the clouds their pomp.
All are warriors: cruel crowns
Are reflected there – towers, burgs, dungeons and citadels –
Whose great smooth walls are like shrouds.
There is but one river, only one,
That mingles with the unfolding of its meanders
Better than grandeur and cruelty,
And that one devotes itself to the people – and to the cities
Where Flanders still lives, works and rises again!
You are gentle or rough, peaceful or arrogant,
Scheldt of the Norths – pale waves and green shores –
Route of wind and sun, wild circus
Where the black stallion of hurricanes rears,
Where white winter leans on torpid icicles,
Where summer shines in the gold of swift facets
That the nervous arms of your currents stirred.
Did I adore you during my early childhood!
Especially when I was forbidden
To handle
Sail or oars of a bargeman,
And to wander among your poorly guarded boats.
The most beautiful ideas
That warm my brow,
You gave them to me:
What immense space is and the deep horizon,
What time is and its well-measured hours,
In the coming and going of your tides,
I learned it from your greatness.
My eyes could gather the hollyhock flowers,
Of the reddest lights,
In the plains of your splendor.
Your tawny and fierce mists were the tents
Where took shelter the panting sorrow
From which I long, for my glory, suffered;
Your waves roused, with their rhythms, my verses;
You kneaded my body, you exalted my soul;
Your storms, your winds, your strong currents, your flames,
Have passed like a sieve through my flesh;
You have tempered me, like a steel being forged,
My being is yours, and when my voice
Names you, a sudden and violent emotion
Grips me and tightens my throat.
Scheldt,
Wild and beautiful Scheldt,
All the blaze
Of my enduring and brandished youth,
You made it bloom:
So,
The day that fate strikes me down,
It is in your soil, it is on your shores,
That my body will be hidden,
To feel you, even through death, still!
Emile Verhaeren
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-scheldt-emile-verhaeren/