To Cupid

Poem by Pierre De Ronsard Collection First Book of LovesThemes LovePeriod 16th centuryPrint

Day drives out night,
And dark night
Drives out the shining day
With a dim shadow.

Autumn follows Summer,
And the harsh rage
Of the winds has never been
After the storm.

But the fever of love
That torments me,
Remains in me always,
And does not slacken.

It was not I, God,
Whom you should have pierced,
Your arrow in another place
Should have landed.

Pursue the idle
And keep them amused,
But not me, nor those
Whom the Muse loves.

Alas, deliver me
From this hard one,
Who laughs more when in distress
She sees that I endure.

Give back the light
To my darkness,
Set free
My funeral days.

Love, be the support
Of my thought,
And guide to a better port
My broken ship.

The more I cry out
That much more she repels me,
The more I go on pleading with her
And the less she listens to me.
Neither my pallid color
Blighted by love
Has moved to sorrow
My enemy.

Nor sounding at her door
With my guitar,
Nor for her sleeping nights
On the ground.

More cruel is not the force
Of the mutinous water
Than she, when stronger
The wind persists.

She arms herself in her beauty,
And yet does not think
To see from her cruelty
The reward.

Show yourself the conqueror,
And inflame in her
As an example the heart
With such a flame,

As the sister kindled
Too indiscreetly,
And with ardor consumed
The Queen in Crete.

Pierre de Ronsard

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-cupid-pierre-de-ronsard/