‘Ô cher pâtre, inquiet et désormais terni,
J’ai vécu pour cela, qui est déjà fini!
Is there any happiness to equal our anticipation of happiness? Only in listening to music can the wearied beauty still believe: ‘Qu’il existe un bonheur qui ressemble au désir,’ and then the melody of Schumann seems to ring with a reproach, a warning, a presentiment, a final certainty:—
‘Je vois, là-bas, dans l’ombre dépouillée
Du jardin où le vent d’automne vient gémir,
Les trahisons, les pleurs, les âmes tenaillées,
Le vieillesse, la mort, la terre entre-bâillée.’
At this point we lose the clue, and wander a while in the Pindaric labyrinth of lyrics. A new love, fresh, kind, and young, appears (we think) on the horizon. Mindful of her ancient rigours, our muse hesitates:—
‘Je porte un vague amour, plus grave et plus ancien,
Qui t’avait précédé et ne peut pas te suivre.’
Yet she does follow her mortal lover. And again she feels that Nature rejects her, thrusts her, with a flaming sword, forth from her Paradise into a disordered world of souls and bodies:—
‘Tu n’es plus cette enfant, libre comme la flamme,
Qui montait comme un jet de bourgeons et d’odeurs.’
This new love is of a different sort, turned towards eternity, and sometimes, as in the song called Un Abondant Amour and also Je ne puis pas comprendre, encore que tu sois né, we feel that it is perhaps the love for a child. In any case, her passion is for some creature still innocent and tender. And this new feeling—the point of departure for the eternal life—does really estrange the poetess from her frenzied pantheism.
‘Je ne regarde plus
Avec la même ardeur un monde qui m’a plu.
Mon esprit tient captifs des oiseaux éternels....
Je songe au noble éclat des nuits platoniciennes.’
But Fate intervenes to separate the two lovers. A lyrical intermezzo drags the pageant of a broken heart through all the miracles of Italy. The universe has avenged itself upon the woman; she is no longer the child of the sun, the sister of the winds, but an unhappy mortal everywhere estranged. And in this desolation, this fast in the desert, there dawns upon her the mystic apprehension of the spiritual world. A series of poems, entitled Les Élévations, enshrines, this experience of our eternity:—