Poems, Victor Hugo [highly recommended books TXT] 📗

brave; Ten? put my name down foremost in the band;

One?—well, alone—until I find my grave.

TORU DUTT.

 

PATRIA.[1]

(“Là-haut, qui sourit.”)

[Bk. VII. vii., September, 1853.]

 

Who smiles there? Is it A stray spirit, Or woman fair?

Sombre yet soft the brow!

Bow, nations, bow; O soul in air,

Speak—what art thou?

In grief the fair face seems— What means those sudden gleams? Our antique pride from dreams Starts up, and beams Its conquering glance,— To make our sad hearts dance, And wake in woods hushed long The wild bird’s song. Angel of Day! Our Hope, Love, Stay, Thy countenance

Lights land and sea

Eternally, Thy name is France

Or Verity.

Fair angel in thy glass When vile things move or pass, Clouds in the skies amass; Terrible, alas! Thy stern commands are then: “Form your battalions, men, The flag display!” And all obey. Angel of might Sent kings to smite, The words in dark skies glance,

“Mené, Mené,” hiss

Bolts that never miss! Thy name is France,

Or Nemesis.

As halcyons in May, O nations, in his ray Float and bask for aye, Nor know decay! One arm upraised to heaven Seals the past forgiven; One holds a sword To quell hell’s horde, Angel of God! Thy wings stretch broad

As heaven’s expanse!

To shield and free

Humanity! Thy name is France, Or Liberty!

[Footnote 1: Written to music by Beethoven.]

 

THE UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC.

(“Temps futurs.”)

[Part “Lux,” Jersey, Dec. 16-20, 1853.]

 

O vision of the coming time! When man has ‘scaped the trackless slime

And reached the desert spring; When sands are crossed, the sward invites The worn to rest ‘mid rare delights

And gratefully to sing.

E’en now the eye that’s levelled high, Though dimly, can the hope espy

So solid soon, one day; For every chain must then be broke, And hatred none will dare evoke,

And June shall scatter May.

E’en now amid our misery The germ of Union many see,

And through the hedge of thorn, Like to a bee that dawn awakes, On, Progress strides o’er shattered stakes,

With solemn, scathing scorn.

Behold the blackness shrink, and flee! Behold the world rise up so free

Of coroneted things! Whilst o’er the distant youthful States, Like Amazonian bosom-plates,

Spread Freedom’s shielding wings.

Ye, liberated lands, we hail! Your sails are whole despite the gale! Your masts are firm, and will not fail—

The triumph follows pain! Hear forges roar! the hammer clanks— It beats the time to nations’ thanks—

At last, a peaceful strain!

‘Tis rust, not gore, that gnaws the guns, And shattered shells are but the runs

Where warring insects cope; And all the headsman’s racks and blades And pincers, tools of tyrants’ aids,

Are buried with the rope.

Upon the sky-line glows i’ the dark The Sun that now is but a spark;

But soon will be unfurled— The glorious banner of us all, The flag that rises ne’er to fall,

Republic of the World!

 

LES CONTEMPLATIONS.—1830-56.

 

THE VALE TO YOU, TO ME THE HEIGHTS.

A FABLE.

[Bk. III. vi., October, 1846.]

 

A lion camped beside a spring, where came the Bird

Of Jove to drink: When, haply, sought two kings, without their courtier herd,

The moistened brink, Beneath the palm—_they_ always tempt pugnacious hands—

Both travel-sore; But quickly, on the recognition, out flew brands

Straight to each core; As dying breaths commingle, o’er them rose the call

Of Eagle shrill: “Yon crownèd couple, who supposed the world too small,

Now one grave fill! Chiefs blinded by your rage! each bleachèd sapless bone

Becomes a pipe Through which siroccos whistle, trodden ‘mong the stone

By quail and snipe. Folly’s liege-men, what boots such murd’rous raid,

And mortal feud? I, Eagle, dwell as friend with Leo—none afraid—

In solitude: At the same pool we bathe and quaff in placid mood.

Kings, he and I; For I to him leave prairie, desert sands and wood,

And he to me the sky.”

H.L.W.

 

CHILDHOOD.

(“L’enfant chantait.”)

[Bk. I. xxiii., Paris, January, 1835.]

 

The small child sang; the mother, outstretched on the low bed,

With anguish moaned,—fair Form pain should possess not long; For, ever nigher, Death hovered around her head:

I hearkened there this moan, and heard even there that song.

The child was but five years, and, close to the lattice, aye

Made a sweet noise with games and with his laughter bright; And the wan mother, aside this being the livelong day

Carolling joyously, coughed hoarsely all the night.

The mother went to sleep ‘mong them that sleep alway;

And the blithe little lad began anew to sing… Sorrow is like a fruit: God doth not therewith weigh

Earthward the branch strong yet but for the blossoming.

NELSON R. TYERMAN.

 

SATIRE ON THE EARTH.

(“Une terre au flanc maigre.”)

[Bk. III. xi., October, 1840.]

 

A clod with rugged, meagre, rust-stained, weather-worried face, Where care-filled creatures tug and delve to keep a worthless race; And glean, begrudgedly, by all their unremitting toil, Sour, scanty bread and fevered water from the ungrateful soil; Made harder by their gloom than flints that gash their harried hands, And harder in the things they call their hearts than wolfish bands, Perpetuating faults, inventing crimes for paltry ends, And yet, perversest beings! hating Death, their best of friends! Pride in the powerful no more, no less than in the poor; Hatred in both their bosoms; love in one, or, wondrous! two! Fog in the valleys; on the mountains snowfields, ever new, That only melt to send down waters for the liquid hell, In which, their strongest sons and fairest daughters vilely fell! No marvel, Justice, Modesty dwell far apart and high, Where they can feebly hear, and, rarer, answer victims’ cry. At both extremes, unflinching frost, the centre scorching hot; Land storms that strip the orchards nude, leave beaten grain to rot; Oceans that rise with sudden force to wash the bloody land, Where War, amid sob-drowning cheers, claps weapons in each hand. And this to those who, luckily, abide afar— This is, ha! ha! a star!

 

HOW BUTTERFLIES ARE BORN.

(“Comme le matin rit sur les roses.”)

[Bk. I. xii.]

 

The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers The tearful roses—lo, the little lovers— That kiss the buds and all the flutterings In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings That go and come, and fly, and peep, and hide With muffled music, murmured far and wide! Ah, Springtime, when we think of all the lays That dreamy lovers send to dreamy Mays, Of the proud hearts within a billet bound, Of all the soft silk paper that men wound, The messages of love that mortals write, Filled with intoxication of delight, Written in April, and before the Maytime Shredded and flown, playthings for the winds’ playtime. We dream that all white butterflies above, Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love, And leave their lady mistress to despair, To flirt with flowers, as tender and more fair, Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies Flutter, and float, and change to Butterflies.

A. LANG.

 

HAVE YOU NOTHING TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?

(“Si vous n’avez rien à me dire.”)

[Bk. II. iv., May, 18—.]

 

Speak, if you love me, gentle maiden!

Or haunt no more my lone retreat. If not for me thy heart be laden,

Why trouble mine with smiles so sweet?

Ah! tell me why so mute, fair maiden,

Whene’er as thus so oft we meet? If not for me thy heart be, Aideen,

Why trouble mine with smiles so sweet?

Why, when my hand unconscious pressing,

Still keep untold the maiden dream? In fancy thou art thus caressing

The while we wander by the stream.

If thou art pained when I am near thee,

Why in my path so often stray? For in my heart I love yet fear thee,

And fain would fly, yet fondly stay.

C.H. KENNY.

 

INSCRIPTION FOR A CRUCIFIX.[1]

(“Vous qui pleurez, venez à ce Dieu.”)

[Bk. III. iv., March, 1842.]

 

Ye weepers, the Mourner o’er mourners behold! Ye wounded, come hither—the Healer enfold! Ye gloomy ones, brighten ‘neath smiles quelling care— Or pass—for this Comfort is found ev’rywhere.

[Footnote 1: Music by Gounod.]

 

DEATH, IN LIFE.

(“Ceux-ci partent.”)

[Bk. III. v., February, 1843.]

 

We pass—these sleep Beneath the shade where deep-leaved boughs Bend o’er the furrows the Great Reaper ploughs, And gentle summer winds in many sweep

Whirl in eddying waves

The dead leaves o’er the graves.

 

And the living sigh: Forgotten ones, so soon your memories die. Ye never more may list the wild bird’s song, Or mingle in the crowded city-throng.

Ye must ever dwell in gloom,

‘Mid the silence of the tomb.

 

And the dead reply: God giveth us His life. Ye die, Your barren lives are tilled with tears, For glory, ye are clad with fears.

Oh, living ones! oh, earthly shades!

We live; your beauty clouds and fades.

 

THE DYING CHILD TO ITS MOTHER.

(“Oh! vous aurez trop dit.”)

[Bk. III. xiv., April, 1843.]

 

Ah, you said too often to your angel

There are other angels in the sky— There, where nothing changes, nothing suffers,

Sweet it were to enter in on high.

To that dome on marvellous pilasters,

To that tent roofed o’er with colored bars, That blue garden full of stars like lilies,

And of lilies beautiful as stars.

And you said it was a place most joyous,

All our poor imaginings above, With the wingèd cherubim for playmates,

And the good God evermore to love.

Sweet it were to dwell there in all seasons,

Like a taper burning day and night, Near to the child Jesus and the Virgin,

In that home so beautiful and bright.

But you should have told him, hapless mother,

Told your child so frail and gentle too, That you were all his in life’s beginning,

But that also he belonged to you.

For the mother watches o’er the infant,

He must rise up in her latter days, She will need the man that was her baby

To stand by her when her strength decays.

Ah, you did not tell enough your darling

That God made us in this lower life, Woman for the man, and man for woman,

In our pains, our pleasures and our strife.

So that one sad day, O loss, O sorrow!

The sweet creature left you all alone; ‘Twas your own hand hung the cage door open,

Mother, and your pretty bird is flown.

BP. ALEXANDER.

 

EPITAPH.

(“Il vivait, il jouait.”)

[Bk. III. xv., May, 1843.]

 

He lived and ever played, the tender smiling thing. What need, O Earth, to have plucked this flower from blossoming? Hadst thou not then the birds with rainbow-colors bright,

The stars and the great woods, the wan wave, the blue sky?

What need to have rapt this child from her thou hadst placed him by— Beneath those other flowers to have hid this flower from sight?

Because of this one child thou hast no more of might, O star-girt Earth, his death yields thee not higher delight! But, ah! the mother’s heart with woe for ever wild,

This heart whose sovran bliss brought forth so bitter birth—

This world as vast as thou, even thou, O sorrowless Earth, Is desolate and void because of this one child!

NELSON K. TYERMAN.

 

ST. JOHN.

(“Un jour, le morne esprit.”)

[Bk. VI. vii., Jersey, September, 1855.]

 

One day, the sombre soul, the Prophet most sublime

At Patmos who aye dreamed, And tremblingly perused, without the vast of Time,

Words that with hell-fire gleamed,

Said to his eagle: “Bird, spread wings for loftiest flight—

Needs must I see His Face!” The eagle soared. At length, far beyond day and night,

Lo! the all-sacred Place!

And