Colonne Vendôme érigée par Napoléon Ier

The Lake (le Lac)

Alphonse de Lamartine.

Still tow’rd new shores we wend our unreturning way. Into thy eternal night borne off before the blast May we then never on the ages’ ocean cast

Anchor for one sole day ?

The year hath scarce attained its term and now alone

By thy belovèd waves, which she should see again,

O lake, Behold I come to sit upon this stone, Where she to sit was fain.

Thou murmuredst then as now against thy rocky steep;

As now thou brok’ st in foam upon thy sheltered sides

Ant at her feet adored the breeze, as now did sweep The spray from off thy tides.

One night rememberest thou? In silence did we float

Nought in the water heard or air was far and near

Except the rower’s stroke, whose oars in cadence smote Upon the waters clear;

When accents all at once, unknown to mortal ear

Th’ enchanted echoes woke, and earth, air, water, all

Straight hearkened, as the voice of her I held so dear These pregnant words let fall.

O Time suspend thy flight; and you propitious hours Your course à moment stay,

Let us the swift delights taste of this day of ours Of this our fairest day.

Be’ t in the breeze that sighs and passes on its way,

In the sounds by thy shores echoed from place to place

In yonder argent star that with its dulcet ray Silvers thy smiling face.

Let, let the wind that moans, let, let the weed that sighs The perfumes light that float in thine embalsomed air, Let all one hears and sees and breathes beneath the skies

Still « They have loved ! » declare.

Past and Present.

(Le Passé et le Présent)

Alfred de Musset.

As old are we as on the morning of thy birth

As much await, and more have loast, than those of then Old Lazarus in his bier, colossal of the earth

Colder and livider, hath laid him down again. Where is a Saviour, now to open up our tombs? Where à Saint Paul to preach upon the Mamertine Drawing à people, all unto his rags divine.

Where is the Cenacle, and where the Catacombs ? With whom the aureole of glory doth it go?

On whose feet do ye fall, perfumes of Magdalene ? Where hovers now the voice, o’ erpassing that of men ? And which, ah which of us himself à God shall show ? The earth as aged is and as degenerate,

She wags as hoary-haired and woebegone à pate

As when on Patmos’ strand, John erst appeared to her And she the moribund, like to a woman great

With child, from torpor roused by those his words of fate, Felt in her starled womb new universes stir.

Tiberius’ days and Claud’s are come again

All is for lapse of time, fall’n lifeless now as then

And of his children’s blood to end is Saturn come. But weary unto death of bringing forth in vain

Her breasts with sucking sore become, the hope of men In her sterility reposes and is dumb.