To Departed Souls

Poem by Victor Hugo Themes ChildhoodPeriod 19th century

These souls that you call back,
My heart, do not return.
Why then do they persist,
Alas! in staying down there?

In the blazing spheres,
In the azure and the rays,
Are they then happier
Than with us who loved them?

We had beneath the arbors
A house near Saint-Leu.
How beautiful the flowers were!
How blue the sky was!

Among the fallen leaves,
We ran in the vermeil wood;
We searched for beetles
On the old walls in the sun;
We laughed that good laugh
That Eden once heard,
Always having to say to each other
What had already been said;

I told Mother Goose;
We were happy, God knows!
We let out cries of joy
For a bird that passed by.

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-departed-souls-victor-hugo/