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The Suns of September
Auguste Lacaussade
Under these mild rays of the suns of September
The sky is soft, but pale, and the earth turns yellow.
In the forests the leaf has the colour of amber;
the bird no longer sings on the edge of its nest.
From the roof of the ploughmen have fled the swallows;
the sickle has passed over the golden ear of the wheat;
you can no longer hear the quivering wings in the air:
the blackbird whistles alone at the bottom of the troubled woods.
The moss is fragrance-free, the herbs soft;
the rush on the ponds leans worried;
the sun, which fades, with a warm sadness,
fills the plain and the mountains and heavens in the distance.
The days are getting shorter; the water running through the valley
no longer has those joyful noises that delighted the air:
It seems that the earth, and shivering and veiled,
in its first shivers feels winter coming.
Oh changing seasons! Oh inexorable laws!
What mourning nature, alas! will be covered with!
Suns of the happy months, irreparable spring,
Farewell! Streams and flowers will shut up and die.
But console yourself, earth! Oh Nature! Oh Cybele!
Winter is a sleep and is not the death:
Spring will return to make you green and beautiful;
Man grows old and dies, you do not grow old!
You will give back to the streams, mute by the cold,
Under the leafy hoops their singing murmurs;
To the birds you will give back their nests in the greenery;
To the lilacs of the valley you will give back its scents.
Ah! captive germs when you melt the chains,
when, from the sap in the floods pouring out the liquor,
You will make the roses and oaks bloom again, O
Nature! with them make my heart bloom again!
Make the poetic sèves dry in my womb,
Pour into me the heat on which the soul feeds,
Make the sheaves of my dreams bloom on my forehead,
Cover my bare branches with the flowers of my spirit.
Without the intoxication of the songs, my high and dear intoxication,
Without the happiness of loving, that the days matter to me!
Oh suns! Oh spring! I only want youth
to sing forever, to love forever!
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