Le philosophe et la Jeune Parque

THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE YOUNG FATE

THE Young Fate, one fine day, found her Philosopher:

«Ah, she said, I will therefore know Of what fabric my being is made ... On more than one I have the effect Of a person most obscure; Each mortal who has not the time To dream nor to plummet the depth, At the name alone I bear is soon made to jump. When it is not pity, it is anger I arouse, And even among the better minds, If there's one who tolerates me, The rest regard it with contempt. This class of person says that a real muse should cause No more puzzlement than a rose! Which is breathed purely for pleasure.

But the love affairs are the most precious

That long toil of soul and of desire Carry to their delicious ends. For profound hearts it does not suffice With a look, and a kiss returned, So that one may more quickly snatch a brief adventure …

No!... The thing truly dear is enriched with your torments, Your eyes in tears see it as diamonds, The bitterest night makes the most tender painting. It is why I guard myself and my charming secrets. My heart requires force, and rejects you, Lovers Discouraged by the knots of my beautiful girdle. My Father has prescribed: I belong to effort.

My darkness has made me the mistress of my fate, And reveals at last to none but the happy few This innocent ME who trembles at her shadow Even as the God of Love is weak at the knees.

INDEED, of great desire I was the anxious work ... But I am not in myself more mysterious Than the most simple amongst you ... Mortals, you are flesh, recollection, forewarning; You were; you will be; you carry such an aspect: You are all things; you are nothing,

Supports of the whole world and reeds that the air breaks, You LIVE ... What an astonishment!... A mystery is all your good, And this secret in you is astonished by mine?

What are you, if you are not mystery? A little dream upon the earth, A little love, hunger, thirst, which make up the steps Each takes without evading death, And you would share the pure destiny of the beasts If the Gods had not placed, as a potent last resort, In the intimate depth of your minds, The great gift of comprehending nothing of your fate. «Who am I?» ask the day the living who awake And are put to right by the sun. «Where go I?» says the mind who has sacrificed sleep, When night gathers him up into its own marvel.

The cleverest is still stung by the bee, In the lesser man's soul a serpent bites again; Even a fool is enriched with enigmas by death Which decks him and drapes him like a grave personage, Chill with such a secret as would keep him a slave.

COME ON!... If all was clear, all would to you seem vain! Your ennui would people a universe without shade With an impassive life of souls without leaven.

But some such restlessness is a present divine. The hope that in your eyes shines at a sombre threshold Can never find repose upon a world too sure; Of all your grandeurs the principle is obscure. The most profound humans, not understood by themselves, From a certain dark night draw out their supreme goods And the most pure objects of their noble loves. A tenebrous treasure makes the brightness of your days: A silence strangely enough is the source of poems. Know then in yourself the su bstance of my discourse: From you I have taken the shadows which you feel.

Who is lost in himself straightway finds me again. In the darkness of life where the glance goes astray, Time is working, death is hatching, A Fate dreams there at a distance. It is ME ... Endeavour to love this young rebel: «I am black, but I am comely» As the Beloved sings, in the Song of Solomon, And if I inspire some terror, Poem that I am, in those who might not follow me,

What could be more speedy than to shut up a book?

It is thus one sets oneself free From these writings so clear one finds only oneself.»