NOCTURNE

You who have heard the heartbeat of the night, 

you who have heard, in the long, sleepless hours, 

A closing door, the rumble of distant wheels, 

A vague echo, a wandering sound from somewhere: 


You, in the moments of mysterious silence, 

When the forgotten ones issue from their prison-- 

In the hour of the dead, In the hour of repose-- 

Will know how to read the bitterness in my verses. 

I fill them, as one would fill a glass, with all 

My grief for remote memories and black misfortunes, 

The nostalgia of my flower-intoxicated soul 

And the pain of a heart grown sorrowful with fêtes; 


With the burden of not being what I might have been, 

The loss of the kingdom that was awaiting me, 

The thought of the instant when I might not have been born 

And the dream my life has been ever since I was! 


All this has come in the midst of that boundless silence 

In which the night develops earthly illusions, 

And I feel as if an echo of the world's heart 

Had penetrated and disturbed my own.