Poems by Victor Hugo Part 35

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 a 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 pa.s.s--for _this_ Comfort is found ev'rywhere.

[Footnote 1: Music by Gounod.]

DEATH, IN LIFE.

_("Ceux-ci partent.")_

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

We pa.s.s--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: G.o.d 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 winged cherubim for playmates, And the good G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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?