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No, under whatever banner the bard may stand,
The muse serves his glory and not his passions!
No, I have not clipped the wings of that angel
To harness him howling to the chariot of factions!
No, I have not covered with the popular mask
His brow resplendent with the fires of the holy precinct,
Nor to whip and bite, irritating his anger,
Changed my muse into Nemesis!
With implacable serpents I have not crowned her;
I have not led her with a rod in hand,
Insulting glory with the lute of Orpheus,
Throwing names as prey to the inhuman vulgar.
Prostituting her verses to the clamors of the street,
I have not torn the priestess from the holy place;
To her profaners I have not sold her,
As Zion sold her God!
No, no: I led her to the depths of solitudes,
Like a jealous lover of a chaste beauty;
I guarded her beautiful feet from too harsh blows
With which the earth would have wounded their tender nakedness:
I crowned her brow with immortal stars,
I perfumed my heart to make her a dwelling,
And I let nothing shelter beneath her wings
But prayer and love!
The pure gold that her prosperous hand sowed beneath my steps
Did not pay for the vine or the potter’s field;
It did not enrich the furrows of my father
Nor the jealous coffers of a greedy heir:
She knows where from heaven this divine denarius falls.
You can without tarnishing it reproach me with this gold!
Other mouths one day will tell you upon my tomb
Where my treasure was buried.
I asked nothing of her lyre but songs,
Sighs for a shadow and hymns for God,
Then, when age came to take away her delirium,
I said to that other soul a too-precocious farewell:
“Leave a heart weighed down by the burden of the fatherland!
Flee our cities of mud and our age of noise!
When the pure water of lakes mingles with sand,
The swan rises and flees.”
Shame on him who can sing while Rome burns,
If he has not the soul and the lyre and the eyes of Nero,
While the conflagration circulates in an ardent river
From temples to palaces, from the Circus to the Pantheon!
Shame on him who can sing while every woman
On the brow of her sons sees death billow,
While every citizen watches whether the flame
Already devours his hearth!
Shame on him who can sing while the sicarii
Shaking their torches sharpen their daggers,
Throw the proscribed gods to popular laughter,
Or drag the busts of the Caesars to the sewers!
It is the hour to fight with the weapon that remains;
It is the hour to mount the bloodstained rostrum,
And to defend at least with voice and gesture
Rome, the gods, liberty!
Liberty! Does that word in my mouth outrage you?
You believe that a helot’s blood is pure enough for me,
And that God made a worthy division of his gifts,
Slavery for us, liberty for you?
You believe that Sejanus’s disdainful smile
Is a prize noble enough for hearts such as mine,
That heaven threw me baseness and the lyre,
And you the soul of a citizen?
You believe that this holy name that makes the earth vibrate,
This eternal sigh of generous mortals,
Between Cato and you must remain a mystery;
That liberty mounts to its first altars?
You believe that she blushes at the Christian who shoulders her,
And that we adore our shame and our fetters
If we do not adore your jealous liberty
On the brazen altar that you serve?
Undeceive yourself, poet, and allow us to be men!
Our mothers made us all from the same clay,
The earth that bears you is the earth where we are,
The fibers of our hearts vibrate to the same sound!
Fatherland and liberty, glory, virtue, courage,
What pact of these goods has disinherited me?
What day have I sold my share of the inheritance,
Esau of liberty?
Go, do not expect from me that I sacrifice it
Neither before your disdains nor before death!
Your God is not mine, and I glory in it:
I adore a greater one who does not curse you!
The liberty I love was born with our soul,
The day when the most just braved the strongest,
The day when Jehovah said to the son of woman:
“Choose, fetters or death!”
May these various tyrants, whose virtue makes sport,
According to the hour and place call themselves people or king,
Dishonor the purple or sully the mud,
The shame that flatters them is the same for me!
What does it matter beneath what foot a slave’s brow bends!
The yoke, of gold or iron, is no less shameful!
Of kings you affronted it, of tribunes I brave it:
Who of us two was less free?
Make us your God more beautiful, if you want him adored;
Open a wider threshold to his diverse cults!
Drive from the precinct that their foot dishonors
Vengeance and insult to the gates of hell!
Remove these false gods from the popular altar,
So that the suppliant is not insulted there!
Be the living lyre, and not the Cerberus
Of the temple of Liberty!
One day, noble tears will wash away this delirium;
And your hand, stifling the sound it has drawn,
More just will pluck from the strings of your lyre
The injurious string where hatred has vibrated!
But I will have drained the cup of bitterness
Without my lip even keeping a memory of it;
For my soul is a fire that burns and perfumes
What is thrown to tarnish it.
Alphonse de Lamartine
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-nemesis-alphonse-de-lamartine/