You see, just avenger, the plagues of your Church

Poem by Théodore Agrippa D'Aubigné Period 16th century

“” You see, just avenger, the plagues of your Church,
Which, by them reduced to ashes and to ruins,
Has, against all hope, its hope in you,
For its entrenchment, the rampart of faith.

Your enemies and we are equal in vice,
If, judge, you sit in your seat of justice;
Yet you make a choice of children or enemies
And this choice is the one your grace has made.

If you do them good, they swell with blasphemies,
If you do us harm, it comes to us from ourselves;
They curse your name when you are gentler to them;
When you bruise us, we will bless you.

… Will you long let reign on this round earth
Your enemy? Are you not lord of the world,
You, Lord, who strike down, who wound, who heal,
Who give life and death, who kill and who nourish?

Princes have no eyes to see these great wonders;
When you wish to thunder, will they have no ears?
Their hands serve only to persecute us;
They have everything for Satan, and nothing to bear you.

Zion receives from them only refusal and harshness,
But Babel ransoms them and plunders their riches;
Such are the horned mountains, which (avaricious)
Show gold to the underworld and snow to the heavens.

The temples of the pagan, the Turk, the idolater,
Raise to the sky the pride of marble and alabaster,
And God alone, poorly lodged in the desert,
Built the whole world and is not housed there!

Sparrows have their nests, swallows their nests;
Some dovecote is set up for simple doves;
Everything is sheltered by the care of mortals,
And God, the only immortal, has no home or altars;

You have the whole universe, where your glory is contemplated,
For footstool the earth and for a temple the sky,
Where will man chase you, O victorious God?
You possess the sky and the heavens of the highest heavens?

We make rocks the places where you are preached,
A temple of the stable, an altar of the manger;
They, from the temple a stable for arrogant donkeys,
From the holy house the cave for brigands.

The first Christians prayed in cemeteries:
We have made our prayers heard in tombs,
Made the name of God the strong resound in tombs,
And announced life to the dwellings of death.

You can make the stones recount your praise;
But do you not always have your footstool on earth?
Do you no longer want any other sacred temples
Than a whitening heap of bones of the dead packed together?

Will the dead praise you? Your great and terrible deeds
Will they come out of the hollow of these horrible mouths?
Will we have among us only earthy faces,
Murmuring your praise in the secrets of our hollows?

In these cavernous places your dear assemblies,
By the shadows of death incessantly troubled,
Will they no longer make your holy places resound,
And your renown fly from earth to the heavens?

What! will we be mute, will we be without ears,
Without moving, without singing, soiled to hear your wonders?
Have you extinguished in us your sanctuary? No,
From our living temples your renown will come forth.

Such is in this state the picture of the Church
She has irons on her feet, seated on the racks,
At her throat the rope and inhuman iron,
A psalm in her mouth and a lute in her hand.

You love the perfect harmony of her hands:
Our lute will sing the principle of life;
Our fingers are no longer fingers except to find your sounds,
Our voices are no longer voices except for your holy songs.

Shelter these voices that the rains make hoarse;
Unchain then these fingers, that on your lute they play;
Draw our dimmed eyes from the gloomy dungeons,
And show us the sky to turn our eyes there.

May your eyes be softened to heal our miseries,
Your propitious ear open to our prayers,
Your breast unbuttoned to lodge our sighs
And your generous hand to our just desires.

May those who have closed their eyes to our miseries,
May those who have had no ear for our prayers,
No heart to help, but indeed to torment,
No hands to give, but indeed to take from us,

Find your eyes closed to judge their miseries;
Your ear be deaf in hearing their prayers;
Your iron-bound breast be closed to pity, to pardons;
Your hand dry and sterile to good deeds and gifts.

May your eyes be clear-sighted to their extreme sins,
May your ear be open to their cries of blasphemies,
Your breast unbuttoned to swell with wrath,
And your hand diligent to redouble your blows.

They have martyrdom for a spectacle and for a game;
The wicked laugh louder than the good sigh there;
Our mortal cries only disturb their laughter,
The laughter whose burst takes away the air from our cries.

They spit toward the moon, and the celestial vaults
Do they no longer have thunder and fire and plagues?
Will they never depart from the throne where you sit
Both Death and Hell that sleep at your feet?

Lift your iron arm, hasten your woolen feet;
Avenge your patience in the bitterness of your pain:
Strike Babel from the sky: the horns of its brow
Disfigure the earth and take away its roundness. “”

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-you-see-just-avenger-the-plagues-of-your-church-theodore-agrippa-d-aubigne/