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My heart, weary of everything, even of hope,
Will no longer trouble fate with its wishes;
Lend me only, valley of my childhood,
A one-day refuge to await death.
Here is the narrow path of the dark valley:
From the side of these hills hang thick woods,
Which, bending their mingled shadow over my brow,
Cover me entirely with silence and peace.
There, two streams hidden under bridges of greenery
Trace in winding lines the contours of the valley;
They mingle for a moment their water and their murmur,
And not far from their source they lose themselves without a name.
The source of my days like them has flowed away;
It passed without noise, without name, and without return:
But their water is limpid, and my troubled soul
Will not have reflected the brightness of a beautiful day.
The coolness of their beds, the shadow that crowns them,
Chain me all day on the banks of the streams,
Like a child rocked by a monotonous song,
My soul grows drowsy at the murmur of the waters.
Ah! it is there that, surrounded by a rampart of greenery,
By a bounded horizon that suffices for my eyes,
I love to fix my steps, and, alone in nature,
To hear only the water, to see only the skies.
I have seen too much, felt too much, loved too much in my life;
I come seeking, alive, the calm of Lethe.
Beautiful places, be for me those shores where one forgets:
Forgetfulness alone is henceforth my bliss.
My heart is at rest, my soul is in silence;
The distant noise of the world expires as it arrives,
Like a distant sound weakened by distance,
Brought to the uncertain ear by the wind.
From here I see life, through a cloud,
Fade away for me into the shadow of the past;
Love alone has remained, like a great image
That alone survives awakening in an erased dream.
Rest, my soul, in this last refuge,
Like a traveler who, his heart full of hope,
Sits down, before entering, at the gates of the city,
And breathes for a moment the fragrant evening air.
Like him, let us shake the dust from our feet;
Man never passes back along this path;
Like him, let us breathe at the end of the race
This calm that foretells eternal peace.
Your days, dark and short like autumn days,
Decline like the shadow on the slope of the hills;
Friendship betrays you, pity abandons you,
And alone, you descend the path of the tombs.
But nature is there, inviting you and loving you;
Plunge into her breast, which she always opens to you;
When everything changes for you, nature is the same,
And the same sun rises on your days.
With light and shade she still surrounds you:
Detach your love from the false goods you are losing;
Adore here the echo that Pythagoras adored,
Lend with him your ear to the celestial concerts.
Follow the day in the sky, follow the shadow on the earth;
In the plains of the air fly with the north wind;
With the soft ray of the star of mystery
Glide through the woods into the shadow of the valley.
God, to conceive Him, made intelligence:
In nature, finally, discover its author!
A voice speaks to the spirit in its silence:
Who has not heard this voice in his heart?
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-valley-alphonse-de-lamartine/