Written After Visiting a Prison Hulk

Poem by Victor Hugo Collection The Four Winds of the SpiritThemes SchoolPeriod 19th century

Every child we teach is a man we win.
Ninety thieves out of a hundred in the prison hulk
Never once went to school,
And do not know how to read, and sign with a cross.
It is in that darkness that they found crime.
Ignorance is the night that begins the abyss.
Where reason crawls, honesty perishes.

God, the first author of all that is written,
Has placed, on this earth where men are drunk,
The wings of spirits in the pages of books.
Every man opening a book finds a wing there, and can
Soar up where the soul moves in freedom.
The school is a sanctuary as much as the chapel.
The alphabet that the child spells out with his finger
Contains under each letter a virtue; the heart
Is gently enlightened by this humble glow.
So to the little child give the little book.
Walk, lamp in hand, so that he can follow you.
Night produces error and error produces assault.
For lack of teaching, we throw into the state
Animal men, unfinished heads,
Sad instincts that go with gouged eyes,
Frightening blind men, with sepulchral gaze,
Who grope in the moral world.
Let us light up minds, that is our first law,
And from the vilest tallow let us make a light.
Intelligence wants to be opened here below;
The seed has the right to bloom; and whoever does not think
Does not live. These thieves had the right to live.
Let us think well on it, the golden school changes copper,
While ignorance turns gold into lead.

I say that these thieves possessed a treasure,
Their immortal thought, august and necessary;
I say that they have the right, from the depth of their misery,
To turn toward you, to whom the day smiles,
And to demand an account of their spirit;
I say that they were man and that he was made brute;
I say that I blame us and that I pity their fall;
I say that it is they who are the despoiled;
I say that the crimes with which they have soiled themselves
Have as their starting point what is not their fault;
Could they enlighten themselves with the torch that is taken from them?
They are the unfortunate and not the enemies.
The first crime was committed against themselves;
In them the flame of thought has been extinguished:
And society has stolen their soul.

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-written-after-visiting-a-prison-hulk-victor-hugo/