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Fly away, song, go tell the King of France
My luminous dream, my supreme hope!
I sing, O my Fatherland, in soft and slow verses
The azure belt bound to your flanks,
The liquid path from Bordeaux to Narbonne
Which the Aude and the Garonne water in turn.
*
Dawn stretches its rosy arms around the sky.
You can smell the rose, you can smell the thyme, you can smell the honey.
The warm breeze, humid with vague odors,
Breathes from the blue sea where the waves foam.
And the blue sea arrives amid the hillsides;
Its submissive flow brings here a thousand boats:
Ships of the East, overloaded with aromatics,
Barges full of corn, lemons, tomatoes,
Feluccas bringing bales of Cashmere,
Tartans where Levantines are seen sleeping.
The sparkling treasures of India and China
Pass by, veiled by the steam of the machine:
It is mother-of-pearl, ivory, and silk and tea,
Tea, suave nectar and chaste voluptuousness;
Mother-of-pearl, ivory carved in forests of the moon,
Willows, peach trees in bloom on blue and brown faille.
Tobacco, hashish, opium, charming poisons,
Deceive all customs officers and all regulations.
In the deep canal, exempt from offshore winds,
This vessel advances, light with its cargo.
It is a Russian, who comes from the great land of wheat,
It is the Friend! We will have bread in troubled times.
Under this beautiful sky, under gleams like gold,
These hurried ships go, a rich swarm of bees.
*
I sing, O my Fatherland, in soft and slow verses,
The azure belt bound to your flanks,
The liquid path from Bordeaux to Narbonne,
Which the Aude and the Garonne water in turn.
*
Here, white, along the banks the houses line up,
Happy, without care for bad seasons.
For the contributions of the world and signal science
Have brought back to life here the olive tree and the vine.
The olive tree is peace; happiness is wine.
All is joy now, in this divine land.
The girls wear in their hair, on promenades,
Cornflowers, jasmines and the pomegranate flower.
They pass by, while over there, the boys
Rhythm the langue d’oc in clear songs.
Toulouse! ancient city where still bloom
For poets, your golden flowers, Clémence Isaure,
Triumphal Toulouse hosts the universe
Under its brick palaces and its green poplars.
And the flute sighs and the harp resounds
On the banks of the canal from Bordeaux to Narbonne.
*
I sing, O my Fatherland, in soft and slow verses,
The azure belt bound to your flanks.
*
From the Ocean, here come in the opposite direction
These black vessels, these wheats poured on the quays,
And gold, silver, copper, objects of a perverse barter
On which crime feeds, and over which my verses weep,
Oxen with big gentle eyes that the sea frightens
Quoted in cruel words, “provisions of the mouth.”
It is America, it is meat and bread.
Let us let it pass. In the East, so many poor are hungry!
The watchword is with the people of England:
Coal, cotton, pay, pass, be silent.
The Englishman is finished, former scarecrow,
Blue sea, where mother-of-pearl shines, where coral reddens!
Under the eyes of night, sleep Mediterranean,
And smile at morning, sea where Venus was born,
And smile at Africa where the indomitable pride
Of our kings made holy liberty bloom!
Flow of azure and ermine, on the rocks you wash
France has forbidden the chaining of slaves!
*
I sing, O my Fatherland, in soft and slow verses,
The azure belt bound to your flanks.
*
Normans, Bretons, Gascons, Languedoc and Provence
Let us drink together to the health of the King of France.
Pass here, let us sing, and shake hands,
Far from storms, far from disastrous roads,
The Gulf of Gascony and the Sargasso Sea,
Gibraltar without profit for the rapacious English.
Scandinavian as you please, universal sailor,
Bring us your catch, take away our salt,
And may your boldness drink its fill with our wine
In Iceland and in the mists of Newfoundland.
*
I sing, O my Fatherland, in soft and slow verses,
The azure belt bound to your flanks,
The path that ideal science dreamed,
The canal dug by royal Power.
*
Here, calm, in the heart of the country, basins
Rock the steel ships, those wasps in swarms.
They give, able to take all routes.
Frenchmen are on board, Death is in the holds.
And the unhealthy East, and the venal West
Do not know where we will come out of the canal.
*
Fly away, song, go tell the King of France
My luminous dream, my supreme hope.
*
Now the canals form something like a maze,
Like an embroidered carpet covering the land.
And the land of vermilion wine, of blond harvests,
France has in its heart the path of two worlds,
The liquid path, blue, bordered with green trees,
That Riquet must have dreamed and that my verses sing.
*
The good iron monsters, excavators and dredges,
Made this river where the two seas join their waves.
And the earth delivered from the depths of its folds
Gaulish pennies stamped with a rooster, stamped with a lily.
The Gaulish pennies found in Alsace, in Lorraine,
Ramparts shown in the East by sovereign France,
France that the Rhine and its tall poplars
Bound, proud witnesses of unforgotten times.
For the Rhine is Gaulish, as the Rhône is Gaulish,
As is the Seine that bathes the feet of the throne,
As is the Loire where Joan and her giant warriors
Drove out the English at the siege of Orléans,
As is the blue path at which the universe marvels,
THE GREAT ROYAL CANAL FROM BORDEAUX TO NARBONNE.
*
The King of France is in Paris in his palace,
He receives everyone, and even the English.
Nothing is as beautiful as Paris on earth
And all hatred and all envy had to fall silent.
Everywhere honor reigns, everywhere law reigns,
One sees how strong are both France and the King.
The King proud abroad, the King for us so tender!
We know all the pardons his hand had to bestow.
And the bad fights and the bad lawsuits
No longer troubled the hearts of the great French people.
The nation, once sacked and bruised,
Offers its King peace, its blood to the Fatherland.
*
But the glory of the King of France goes higher
Than the earth. Now it is heaven that he needs.
For heaven is peopled with amorous spheres,
Like us, with light and shady forests;
For scientists have seen for more than a hundred years
Signals made in vain. There was no time!
Mars, the austere planet where science reigns,
Greets us. They have seen the blue streak on France.
A bright point, rhythmic, by a secret will
In that distant world, appears, disappears.
Guess, geometer, and answer, astronomer!
Let them know that among us the Word was made man.
Their genius is inscribed in canals so numerous!
They said to themselves: “On earth too the spirit reigns.”
They have seen the sign of it with the powerful telescope,
Their flashes are the call to the earth, to Europe,
And France, where the ancient evil had to be appeased,
Receives the planetary and fraternal kiss.
So France was, on earth, the first
To answer light with light.
*
I have sung, my Fatherland, in soft and slow verses,
The azure belt bound to your flanks.
*
Fly away, song, go tell the King of France
My luminous dream, my supreme hope.
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-vision-of-the-great-royal-canal-of-the-two-seas-charles-cros/