When My Spirit, Once Subject to Your Wrath

Poem by Théodore Agrippa D'Aubigné Period 16th century

When my spirit, once subject to your wrath,
In the Elysian Fields shall end my tears,
I shall see the lovers who from such misery
Tasted such repose after such misfortunes,
And your likenesses too, whom their very sentence
Punishes incessantly in hollow, pallid Hell,

To whoever has served such a lady
With so much rigor and fidelity,
I shall equal my death as I did my life,
Cursing in emulation all fickleness,
Shunning the water of oblivion to experience
How sweet is the remembrance of past ills.

O lovers escaped from the miseries of the world,
I was the serf of an eye more beautiful than any other eye,
Serf of a tyranny second to none,
And my constant love never had its equal.
There is no constant lover who in faith surpasses me,
Diane never had an equal in inconstancy,

I shall see in the Underworld the pains prepared
For those who have loved lightly,
Who have trampled underfoot their sworn promises,
And for each crime, each own torment.
Gods, strike the murderer, or else justice errs
Banished from high Heaven as from the earth!

No other punishment is needed for the inconstant one
Than to live a hundred years tasting the remorse
Of her inhuman, bloody fickleness,
Her very actions shall be a thousand deaths to her,
Her arrows shall strike her and the mortal wound
That she made in my breast shall bleed again upon her.

I shall break at night the curtains of her bed,
Besieging the bed of the three infernal Sisters,
Bearing fire, lament, and blood in my mouth.
The ordinary awakening is the terror of the night,
My cry against Heaven shall strike the vengeance
Of the bloody murder done by her inconstancy. […]

Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné

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-when-my-spirit-once-subject-to-your-wrath-theodore-agrippa-d-aubigne/