To Georges

Poem by Victor Hugo Themes ChildhoodPeriod 19th century

My gentle Georges, come see some menagerie
Or other, at Buffon’s, at the circus, no matter where;
Without leaving Lutetia let us go to Assyria,
And without leaving Paris let us set out for Timbuktu.

Come see the leopards of Tyre, the bearded vultures,
The growling bear, the formidable boa without a sound,
The zebra, the jackal, the ounce, and those two poets,
The eagle drunk with sunlight, the vulture full of night.

Come contemplate the sagacious lynx, the amphisbaena
To which Job compared his false friend Sepher,
And the dark black tiger, whose ebony mask
Has two flaming holes through which one sees hell.

To see up close the tawny bird and the shiver of its wings,
Is charming; we shall have, beneath very safe shelters,
The spectacle of wolves, of jaguars, of gazelles,
And the divine dazzlement of hummingbirds.

Let us leave human noise. Come to the botanical garden.
Let us lean, through the shadow in which we stifle,
Over the sorrows below, vaguely calling out,
And over the confused steps of the deep unknowns.

The animal is shadow wandering in the darkness;
We know not if it listens, we know not if it hears;
It has haggard cries, it has funereal eyes;
A sublime affirmation comes from it nonetheless.

We who reign, how many useless things
We say, without knowing the harm we do!
When truth comes, we are hostile to it,
And against reason we have our reasons.

Corbière in the tribune and Frayssinous in the pulpit
Are far inferior to the beast of the woods;
The soul in the forest dreams and lets itself be led;
I doubt in a temple, and on a mountain I believe.

God by the voices of shadow obscurely names himself;
No Quirinal is worth the wild Pelion;
It is good, when one has just heard man speak,
To go hear the great lion roar a little.

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-georges-victor-hugo/