Whither, O whither fled are ye, ye powerful, redoubtable gods;
And ye, ye famous Druids, the glory and terror of Armor?
Who has usurped, who has o’erwhelmed ye, unconquerable knights,
Warriors of the golden collar?
Thou, who harkenest, I have been in the place of the Ancients!
I, alone among mortals, thence have issued alive:
Alas, the temple was deserted: I saw nought but some wind-haunted oaks
Swaying in the silence.
All is fugitive! pride, pleasure, the song, the dance,
Blithe joys of friendship, noble rivalries all:
The keen swift song of the swords, the whistling lances!
Dreams of a dreamer all!... But no,
A new dawn wakes and laughs on the breast of the darkness;
Earth has her sunshine still, the grave her Spring;
Many a time Dylan hath oared me afar in the deathbarque,
Many a death-sleep mine, and long!
For long I have slept with the heavy sleep of the dead,
Ofttimes my fugitive body has passed into divers forms,
I have spread strong wings on the air, I have swum in dark waters,
I have crawled in the woods.
But, amid all these manifold changes, my soul
Remaineth ever the same: it is always, always “myself”!
And now I see well that this is the law of all that liveth,
Though none beholdeth the reason, none the end.
Still stand our lonely menhirs, and still the wayfarer shudders
As in the desolate dusk he passes these Stones of Silence!
Thou speakest, I understand! Thy Breton tongue
Is that of the ancient Kymry.
Lights steal through the hours of shadow flame-lit for unknown saints,
As, in the days of old, our torches flared on the night:
Ah, before ever these sacred lamps shone for your meek apostles,
They burned for Héol.
Blind without reason are we, thus changing the names of the gods:
Thus, mayhap, we think to destroy them, we who abandon their altars!
But, cold, calm, unsmiling before our laughter and curses,
The gods wait, immortal.
Yea, while the sacred fires still burn along the hill-tops,
Yea, while a single lichened menhir still looms from the brushwood,
Yea, whether they name thee Armorica, Brittany, Breiz-Izèl,
Thou art ever the same dear land!