Selected Poems by Victor Hugo

Author:Victor Hugo [Hugo, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136068508
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

At Villequier

Now that the monuments of Paris and its streets,

Its fog and its buildings, are far from my eyes;

And now that I am under the branches of trees,

And can dream of the landscape’s beauty, and the sky’s;

Now that, victorious and pale, I feel my grief

About to depart,

And I sense the peace and the vastness of nature

Entering my heart;

Now that I am able, sitting on this shore

And moved by this dazzling but calm horizon,

To examine the truths inside me once more

And look at the flowers, the grass, and the sun;

Now that, my God! I feel this dark quiet

Knowing I can never

See again the stone in the shadow of which

She will sleep forever;

Now that I am softened by these divine scenes,

Plains, rocks, valleys, woods, streams – blue and silvery,

And sensing my smallness and seeing your works

I feel my mind healing in this immensity;

I come to you, oh Lord, in whom I must believe,

Carrying a token

Of your glory in all the pieces of my heart

You have torn and broken;

I come to you, Lord! confessing that you

Are good, mild, gentle, merciful, indulgent,

And I admit that you alone know what you do,

And we are all rushes that shake in the wind;

I grant that the tomb sealing death from the air

Opens the firmament,

And what we consider down here as the end

Is the beginning there;

I admit, on my knees, it is you I should trust,

That you alone possess the real, the infinite;

I admit it was good, I admit it was just

That my heart bled because you wanted it!

I no longer resist anything that occurs

Because of your will, to me.

We roll from grief to grief, and drift from shore to shore

Toward your eternity.

We never see more than one side of things;

The other is sunk in dark mysteries.

We submit to the yoke without knowing the cause

And everything is brief and futile, and flees.

You always make solitude follow our steps

No matter where we go.

You never wanted us to have certitude

Or joy here below!

Whatever we have is soon taken away.

Nothing is given us forever from above

Such that we can make a dwelling here and say:

‘This is my home, and my land, and my love.’

We won’t see for long whatever we see

And time will not relent.

Since that’s how things are and how they must be;

I consent, God, I consent!

The world is dark, Lord, and your harmony

Is composed as much of tears as it is of song.

Man is an atom in this infinity

Where the good men ascend and the wicked ones fall.

I know you have many other things to do

Besides pitying us,

And that a dead child, a mother’s distress

Isn’t much to you.

I know that fruit falls when winds shake the bough,

That birds lose their feathers and flowers their scent,

That nature’s a vast wheel that doesn’t move

Without crushing some one in its descent;

That the months and the days, ocean waves, teary eyes,

Pass by here below,

That the grass has to grow and children die:

I know, my God, I know!

Far beyond the sphere of clouds, in your heaven,

In the depths of this dormant and slumbering blue,

Perhaps you effect unimaginable things

Which our grief, like an element, enters into.

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