Whoever on the Bones of Dreadful Tombs, Poem by Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné

Poem by Théodore Agrippa D'Aubigné Period 16th century

Whoever on the bones of dreadful tombs will see
The sad lover, the wretched remains
Of a heart dried up with love, and the motionless body
Which by its dead soul is placed among the dead,

Let him deplore the fate of a soul contrary to itself,
Which for another body, to its own body adverse,
Leaves me examined without life and without dying,
Makes me run to the dark tombs after it.

Demons who haunt the slab of sepulchers,
Help me, tell me news of my soul,
Or show me the bones it follows adoring
Of the dead friendship that is not dead in dying.

Diane, where are the features of that beautiful face?
Why does my eye not see as it saw your grace,
Or why does the eye of the soul, both keener and stronger,
See you and has not wished to die in your death?

She is no longer here, O my blinded soul,
The body flew to heaven when the soul went there;
My heart, my blood, my eyes, would see among the dead
Her heart, her blood, her eyes, if that were her body.

If you burn forever with an eternal flame,
Forever I shall be a body without you, my soul,
The tombs will see me frightened by my cries,
Amorous companions of amorous spirits.

Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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