To André Chénier, Poem by Victor Hugo

Poem by Victor Hugo Collection Les contemplationsThemes ArtPeriod 19th century

Yes, my verse believes it can, without marrying beneath itself,
Borrow from prose a little of its familiar air.
André, it’s true, I sometimes laugh on the lyre.
Here is why. Still very young, trying to read
In the frightening book of forests and waters,
I lived in a dark park where birds chattered,
Where tears smiled in the blue eye of periwinkles;
One day as I mused alone among the branches,
A bullfinch who was writing the wood’s column
Told me: —One must walk on the ground sometimes.
—Nature is a little mocking around men;
—O poet, your songs, or what you thus call them,
—Would resemble her better if you deflated them.
—The woods have sighs, but they have whistles.
—The azure shines, when sometimes gaiety tears it;
Olympus remains great even bursting into laughter;
—Do not believe that the poet’s spirit descends
When between two grand verses a word passes dancing.
—The wind in madness is not a weeper;
The deep wave is not a singer of romances;
And nature, in the depths of centuries and nights,
Coupling Rabelais with Dante full of sorrows,
And sinister Ugolino with misshapen Grandgousier,
Near immense mourning shows enormous laughter.—

Victor Hugo

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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