The Winter of Sieur d'Aubigné, Poem by Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné

Poem by Théodore Agrippa D'Aubigné Period 16th century

My fickle humors, more sterile than fair,
Depart, and I tell them: “You feel, swallows,
The heat withdrawing and the cold arriving.
Go nest elsewhere so as not to vex, impure ones,
My bed with chatter and my table with filth;
Let the night of my winter sleep in peace.”

By a single point the sun withdraws from the hemisphere;
It casts less ardor, but as much light.
I change without regrets when I repent
Of frivolous loves and their artifice.
I love winter, which comes to purge my heart of vice,
As from plague the air, the earth from serpents.

My head turns white beneath the piled snows;
The sun that shines on me warms them, frozen,
But cannot melt them in the shortest of these months.
Melt, snows, come down upon my heart,
So that it can no longer kindle from my ashes
A blaze, as it once did with flames.

But what, shall I be extinguished before my life is out?
Shall the living and holy flame no longer shine in me,
The blazing zeal of your holy house?
I make to the holy altars holocausts of the remnants
Of ice to impure fires, and of naphtha to celestial ones,
Bright and sacred torch, not a funeral brand.

Here are fewer pleasures, but here are fewer pains!
The nightingale falls silent, the sirens fall silent;
We see neither fruits nor flowers gathered.
Hope is no longer very often deceitful;
Winter enjoys everything: blessed old age,
The season of use and no longer of labors.

But death is not far off; this death is followed
By a living without dying, end of a false life,
Life of our life and death of our death.
Who hates safety to love shipwreck?
Who was ever so fond of the voyage
That its length is sweeter than the port?

Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné

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-winter-of-sieur-daubigne-theodore-agrippa-d-aubigne/