To My Daughter, Poem by Victor Hugo

O my child, you see, I submit.
Do as I do: live far from the world;
Happy? no; triumphant? never.
— Resigned! —

Be good and gentle, and lift a pious brow.
As the day in the heavens sets its flame,
You, my child, in the blue of your eyes
Set your soul!

No one is happy and no one is triumphant.
The hour is for all an incomplete thing;
The hour is a shadow, and our life, child,
Is made of it.

Yes, all men are weary of their lot.
To be happy, for all, — morose destiny! —
Everything has failed. Everything, that is, alas!
A little thing.

That little thing is what, for his part,
In the universe each one seeks and desires:
A word, a name, a little gold, a glance,
A smile!

Joy is lacking to the great king without loves;
The drop of water is lacking to the immense desert.
Man is a well where the void always
Begins again.

See those thinkers whom we deify,
See those heroes whose brows dominate us,
Names by which always our dark horizons
Are illuminated!

After having, as a torch does,
Dazzled all with their countless rays,
They went to seek in the tomb
A little shade.

Heaven, which knows our ills and our sorrows,
Takes pity on our vain and sonorous days.
Each morning, it bathes with its tears
Our dawns.

God enlightens us, at each of our steps,
About what He is and what we are;
A law comes forth from the things below,
And from men!

This holy law, one must conform to it.
And here it is, every soul can attain it:
Hate nothing, my child; love all,
Or pity all!

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-my-daughter-victor-hugo/