10. To Madame D. G. de G.

Once I said to you: “Live, Madame—reign!
The salon awaits you! Success calls your name!
The dazzling ball grows pale at your going!
Be illustrious, beautiful! Love! Laugh! Show, sing!
You own the splendour of roses and stars!
Your charming gaze, in which I read your memoirs,
Complements your light and your most graceful words.
Your mouth’s sparkles on your eyes conferred.
It seems, when sorrow sometimes makes you fear,
The drop of a pearl, and never a tear.
Even when you are dreaming, you can still smile.
Live, feted and proud, O golden-haired belle!”
Now you are pale, solemn, silent, you know it,
Dead, and transfigured; I say to you: “Poet!
Come fetch me! Archangel! Mysteriously be!
Make earth and heavens transparent to me!
Reveal to me, let your profound mouth say the word,
The great human enigma, secret of the world!
Confirm to me Descartes and Spinoza too!
You know the true name of the One who broke through—
So that we might see His light shining far—
Holes in dark ceiling we like to call stars!
For I feel you hovering beneath low tree limbs;
Your invisible lyre holding your sublime hymns!
My sombre ocean, on which the skiff floats rager,
Both terrifies and delights you; for holy nature—
Eternal nature, the fields, and woods choice—
Speak of your great soul with their mighty voice!"

Paris, 1840. — Jersey, 1855.