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To Mme de P***.
There is for thought an hour… a sacred hour,
When, fleeing from the celestial sphere,
To console the heavens for the absence of day,
Twilight upon the mountains prolongs its farewells.
On the horizon its uncertain glow is seen,
Like the floating edges of a trailing robe,
Slowly sweeping the darkened firmament,
Where the tarnished stars revive in the azure.
Then those globes of gold, those islands of light,
That the dreaming eyelid seeks by instinct,
Leap by thousands from the fleeing shadow
Like golden dust on the footsteps of night;
And the breath of evening that flies upon its trail,
Sows them in swirls through the brilliant space.
The dazzled eye seeks and loses them at once;
Some seem to hover over the treetops,
Like a celestial bird whose swift wings
Open and burst forth in sheaves of sparks.
Others in brilliant waves spread through the air,
Like a rock whitened with the foam of seas;
Those, like a steed flying in the race,
Unroll in long folds their floating mane;
These, on the horizon half leaning,
Seem like eyes open on the sleeping world,
While at the edges of the sky light stars
Sail through that azure like white sails
That, returning to port from a distant shore,
Shine on the Ocean in the morning’s rays.
Of these brilliant stars, his most sublime work,
God alone knows the number, the distance, and the age;
Some, already aged, pale before our eyes,
Others have lost themselves in the roads of the heavens,
Others, like flowers that his breath caresses,
Raise a laughing brow of grace and youth,
And, charming the East with their fresh brightness,
Astonish suddenly the eye that had counted them.
In the celestial dance they leap… and man,
Like a newborn, salutes them and names them.
What mortal, intoxicated by their chaste gaze,
Letting his drifting eyes fix on them at random,
And seeking the purest among that supreme choir,
Has not consecrated it with the name of what he loves?
I myself… there is one, solitary, isolated,
That, in my long nights, has often consoled me,
And whose brightness, veiled by the shadows of mystery,
Recalls to me a gaze that shone on earth.
Perhaps?… ah! may he in the celestial dwelling
Bear at least this name that Love gave him!
Meanwhile the night advances, and over the immense abyss
All these floating worlds gravitate in silence,
And we ourselves, with them carried in their course
Toward an unknown port, still advance!
Often, during the night, at the breath of the zephyr,
One feels the earth also floating like a ship.
With brilliant foam one sees the mountains covered
Cleave with an even course the rumbling wave of the air;
On these azure waves where the globe plays,
One hears the north wind break beneath the prow,
And the sad whistlings of the wind in the masts,
And the dull moanings of its beaten flanks;
And man on the abyss where his dwelling floats
Sails with delight on the faith of the pilot!
Suns! floating worlds that sail with us,
Tell, if he has told you, where then are we all going?
What is the celestial port where his breath guides us?
What end did he assign to our swift flight?
Are we going toward shores of silence and mourning,
Running aground in the night on some vast reef,
To sow the immensity with the debris of shipwreck?
Or, led by his hand onto a brilliant shore,
And on the eternal anchor forever secured,
In a gulf of the sky to land asleep?
You who swim closer to the celestial vault,
Sparkling worlds, you know it without doubt!
That purer Ocean, that sky where you float,
Lets more vivid clarities reach you;
More brilliant than we, you know more;
For of truth light is the image!
Yes: if I believe the brightness with which your wandering orbs
Silver the transparent domes of forests,
Which gliding suddenly over irritated seas,
Calm while illuminating the agitated waves;
If I believe these rays whose sensible day
Inspires virtue, prayer, love,
And when the softened eye half-opens to their light,
Draw a tear to the edge of the eyelid;
If I believe these instincts, these sweet forebodings
That direct toward us the sighs of lovers,
The eyes of beauty, the dreams one regrets,
And the fiery flight of the eagle and the poet!
Tents of the sky, Edens! temples! brilliant palaces!
You are a dwelling of innocence and peace!
In the calm of nights, across the distance,
You pour upon us your distant influence!
All that we seek, love, truth,
These fruits fallen from heaven that earth has tasted,
In your brilliant climes that the gaze envies
Forever nourish the children of life,
And man, one day perhaps to his destinies restored,
Will find again with you all that he has lost?
Alas! how many times alone, watching on those peaks
Where our soul, freer, has more sublime vows,
Beautiful stars! flowers of the sky that the lily envies,
I have murmured under my breath: Why am I not one of you?
Why can I not, escaping this globe of mud,
In the dazzling sphere where my gaze plays,
Strewing with one more fire the forecourt of the holy place,
Blossom suddenly beneath the steps of my God,
Or shine on the brow of supreme beauty,
Like a pale ornament of his holy diadem?
In the limpid azure of these crystal waves,
Still remembering my natal globe,
I would come each night, late and solitary,
On the mountains I loved to shine near the earth;
I would love to glide beneath the night of branches,
To sleep on the meadows, to float on the waters;
To pierce gently the veil of a cloud,
Like a look of love that modesty shades:
I would visit man; and if here below
There is a pensive brow, eyes that do not close,
A soul in mourning, a heart that a sublime weight oppresses,
Pouring before God its pious sadness;
An unhappy one hiding his sorrows from the day
And in the breast of nights letting his tears flow,
A restless genius, an active thought
By too strong an instinct launched into the infinite;
My ray, penetrated with a holy friendship,
For too well-known ills lavishing its pity,
Like a secret of love poured into a tender heart,
On those bowed brows would gladly descend!
My fraternal glow, flowing down upon them,
Would sleep on their breast, would smile at their eyes:
I would reveal to them in the divine language
A word of the great secret that misfortune divines;
I would dry their tears; and when the eye of morning
Would pale my disk on the distant horizon,
My ray, leaving their softened eyelid,
Would still leave them the vague reverie,
And peace and hope; and, weary of groaning,
At least before dawn they could fall asleep!
And you, brilliant sisters! stars, my companions,
Who enamel the countryside of the blue firmament,
And cadencing your steps to the lyre of the heavens,
Knot and unknot your harmonious choirs!
Introduced in your steps into the celestial chain,
I would follow through the azure the instinct that draws you,
You would guide my eye in that brilliant desert,
Labyrinth of fires where the gaze is lost!
Your rays would teach me to praise, to know
Him whom we seek, whom you perhaps see!
And drowning in his breast my trembling clarities,
I would feel in him… all that you feel!
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-stars-alphonse-de-lamartine/