From The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume E

Celebrated among the French Romantics for his "poetry of the soul," lyric meditations that united passion, philosophy, and religious humanism, Alphonse de Lamartine was also a novelist and statesman who served in various diplomatic and elected positions before retiring in disgust at Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat in 1851.

Poetry, Lamartine said, echoes our deepest intuitions and intelligence: it is a sincere expression of the whole human being. Much of his own poetry draws on personal life, and The Lake, whose lyrical passion inspired a generation of French Romantics, recalls a brief but intense love affair between the poet and a young married woman, Julie Charles. Meeting one summer when both were at a health resort on Lake Bourget in the French Alps, they separated over the winter but promised to meet again the next year. When the poet returned to the lake, however, Julie was already dying and the poet found himself alone. The Lake is Lamartine's elegy to his lost love, a melodious complaint that moves from the intimate situation of two lovers to a meditation on nature and time.


(Side note: some scholars believe the affair may have been platonic)


Lac Bourget, France


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The Lake

And thus, forever driven towards new shores,
Swept into eternal night without return,
Will we never, for even one day, drop anchor
    On time's vast ocean?
O Lake! Only a year has now gone by,
And to these dear waves she would have seen again,
Look! I'm returning alone to rest on the very work
    Where you saw her rest!

Then as now, you rumbled under these great rocks;
Then as now, you broke against their torn flanks;
The wind hurling the foam from your waves
    Onto her adored feet.

One evening, you recall? We drifted in silence;
Far off on the water and under the stars hearing
Only the rhythmic sound of oars striking
    Your melodious waves.

Suddenly strains unknown on earth
Echoed from the enchanted shore;
The water paid heed, and the voice so dear
    To me spoke these words:

"O time, suspend your flight! and you, blessed hours,
    Suspend your swift passage.
Allow us to savor the fleeting delights,
    Of our most happy days!

So many wrteched people beseech you:
    Flow, flow quickly for them;
Take away the cares devouring them;
    Overlook the happy.

But I ask in vain for just a few more moments,
    Time escaping me flees;
While I beg the night: 'Slow down,' already
    It fades into dawn.

Then let us love, let us love! And the fleeting hours
    Let us hasten to enjoy.
We have no port, time itself has no shore;
    It glides, and we pass away."

Jealous time, will these moments of such intoxication,
Love flooding us with overwhelming bliss,
Fly past us with the same speed
    As dark and painful days?

What! will we not keep at least the trace of them?
What! They are gone forever? Totally lost?
This time that gave them and is obliterating them,
    Will it never return them to us?

Eternity, nothingness, past, somber abysses,
What are you doing with the days you swallow up?
Speak: will you ever give back the sublime bliss
    You stole from us?

O lake! silent rocks! shaded grottoes! dark forest!
You whom time can spare or even rejuvenate,
Preserve, noble nature, preserve from this night
    At least the memory!

May it live in your peace, may it be in your storms,
Beautiful lake, and in the light of your glad slopes,
And in these tall dark firs and in these savage rocks,
    Overhanging your waves.

May it be in the trembling zephyr passing by,
In the endless sounds that carry from shore to shore
In the silver faced star that whitens your surface
    With its softened brilliance.

May the moaning wind and sighing reed,
May the delicate scent of your frangrant breeze,
May everything that we hear and see and breathe,
    Awaken the memory of -- their love!





(Editor K.'s note: I transcribed this out of The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume E. This translated version is by Andrea Moorhead)








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