To a Writer, Poem by Victor Hugo

Poem by Victor Hugo Period 19th century

Beware of Marchangy. Poetic prose
Is a rut where the old consumptive Pegasus groans.
As much as verse, to be sure, prose has a right
To just cadence, to divine rhythm; so be it;
Provided that, without aping meter, the cadence
Hides within it and that austere rhythm condenses there.
In vain prose attempts a stunning flight.
The verse soars to the sky quite naturally;
It rises; it is the verse; some frail
And eternal thing, which sings and hovers and beats its wing;
It mingles, fierce and with lightning in its eyes,
With all those glimmers of the mysterious sky
That the shivering dawn carries off in its veils.
Even if one made it dance up to the stars,
Prose is always the sermo pedestris.
You think you are Ariel and you are only Vestris.

July 24, 1859.

Victor Hugo

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-to-a-writer-victor-hugo/