Thou, of God’s holy words the magnanimous preacher,
Even so, Lamartine, O my father, my teacher,
When by song, and by deed, and consoling tear,
Thou did’st lavish thy love and thy light unsparing,
Till the world had its fill, and the world, not caring,
Grew weary and sated, and would not hear:
Then each one his taunt through the mist must needs fling thee,
And each one a stone from his armoury sling thee:
Thy splendour but hurt us, and tired our sight;
For a star that grows dim and no longer can light them,
And a crucified god—these will ever delight them,
The ignorant crowd—and the toads love night.
Oh, then were there seen things prodigious, by Heaven!
Fresh youth to the soul of the world had he given,
He, of purest poesy mighty source;
Yet the new young rhymesters were moved to laughter
O’er his sadness prophetic, and said thereafter
“That he knew not the poet’s art, of course!”
High-Priest of the great Adonaï, he raises
The soul of our creeds by the heavenly praises
He hymns on the strings of Sion’s golden harp!
Yet, calling to witness the Scriptures proudly,
“A man irreligious” they dub him loudly,
The Pharisee bigots who mouth and carp.
He, the great, tender heart who has sung the disaster
Of our monarchs ancestral, and he, the master
Who with pomp of marble has built their tomb,
On him all the gapers who vow adoration
To the Royalist cause, have pronounced condemnation;
They call him insurgent—and give him room.
He, the voice apostolic, while all men wondered,
The great word “Republic” hath hurled and thundered
Across the world’s skies, till the peoples thrilled!
Yet him, by a frenzy unspeakable smitten,
Have all the mad dogs of Democracy bitten,
And growled at him, snarled at him as they willed!
To the crater of fire, he, great patriot, had given
Wealth, body and soul, and his country had striven
To save from the burning volcano’s flame;
Yet when, poor, he was begging his bread, all denied him,
The bigwigs and burghers as spendthrift decried him,
And, shut up in ease, to their boroughs came.
When he saw himself then in disaster forsaken—
With his cross, and by anguish and suffering shaken,
Alone he ascended his Calvary;
And at dusk some good souls heard a long, long sighing,
And then, through the spaces, this cry undying
Rang out: “Eloi, lama sabachthani.”
But none dared draw nigh to that hill-top lonely,
So he waited in patience and silence only,
With his deep eyes closed and his hands spread wide;
Till, calm as the mountains at heaven’s high portal,
Amidst his ill-fortune, and fame immortal,
Without ever speaking a word, he died.
(Trans. Alma Strettell.)