Le lac [English translation]

So then, forever pushed toward new shores like this,

swept away into eternal night without return

on the ocean of the ages-- can we never

cast anchor for a single day?

O lake! the year is scarcely over,

and near the beloved waters that she should have seen again,

look! I've come alone to sit on this stone

where you saw her sitting!

You groaned the same way then under these deep rocks;

you broke the same way on their torn flanks;

the wind threw the foam from your waves the same way

on her adored feet.

~ ~

One evening, do you remember? We were floating in silence;

on the waves, beneath the sky, there was nothing to hear but

the distant sound of oarsmen beating in rhythm

against your harmonious waves.

Suddenly unearthly accents

came echoing from the enchanted shore:

the water listened, and the voice that I love

let fall these words:

"O time, suspend your flight! and you, happy hours,

suspend your race:

let us savor the fleet delights

of our fairest days!

"Enough unhappy people here beg you--

rush, rush for them;

take their days and the cares that devour them--

forget the happy people.

"But I ask in vain for a few more moments,

time escapes me and flees;

I say to this night: Be slower; and dawn

comes to melt the night.

"Let us love then, let us love! let us revel in

the flying hour-- hurry!

Man has no harbor, Time has no shore;

it flows, and we pass!"

~ ~

Envious Time, can it be that these euphoric moments,

when love pours out long surges of happiness for us,

fly away from us at the same speed

as the unhappy days?

What! Can't we at least hold on to the traces?

What! gone forever? What! completely lost?

The same Time that gave them, the same Time that erased them,

will never give them back to us?

~ ~

Eternity, nothingness, Past, dark chasms,

what do you do with the days you engulf?

Speak: will you give us back that sublime ecstasy

that you snatch from us?

O lake! silent rocks! caves! dark forest!

you whom Time spares or can make young again,

beautiful Nature-- keep, keep from that night

at least the memory!

~ ~

May it be in your rest, may it be in your storms,

beautiful lake, and in the look of your smiling shoreline,

and in these black pines, and in these wild rocks

leaning over your waters.

May it be in the soft wind that shivers and passes,

in the sounds of the lake water lapping your banks,

in the silver-browed star that whitens your surface

with its soft clearness.

May the wind that groans, the reed that sighs,

may the soft scent of your fragrant air,

may everything that is heard, seen or breathed

all say: They loved!