Peader Hoolan

my morning poem,,,

SOLITUDE (LAMARTINE)

Glancing from a craggy height, how often
I sit pensive in the shade of dense thickets,
evenings varied pictures unfolding before me.
Here a river foams, the beauty of the valley,
leaving me, fading in the dark distance;
there the slumbering ripples of an azure pond
are bright in deep silence.
Through the dark foliage of trees
I see dusks last ray still wandering.
The moon slowly rises from the north
on a chariot of clouds and from a lone belfry
drawn-out, indistinct peals are heard all around.
The passer-by listens, and the distant bell
fuses its voice with the days final sounds.
The world is beautiful! Yet rapture
has no place in my withered heart!
Like an orphaned shade I wander through a foreign land,
dead, the light of the sun powerless to warm me.
My gaze slips sadly from hill to hill,
slowly extinguished in the fearsome void.
Alas, where shall I meet that on which my gaze might rest?
There is no happiness, for all natures beauty!
And you, my fields, copses and valleys,
you are dead! Lifes spirit has flown away from you!
What do you have for me now, joyless scenes?
There is one missing from the world, and the whole world has emptied!
Let day break, let nocturnal shades descend,
both darkness and light are repellent to me.
My fate knows no change
and theres eternal grief in the deeps of my soul!
But is the wanderer to languish long in his prison?
When shall I abandon this earthly dust for a better world,
that world where there are no orphans,
where what you believe in comes to pass,
where there are suns of truth in imperishable skies?
Then, perhaps, there will shine through
the saving object of my secret hopes,
to which my soul here still strives,
which it will embrace only there, in my native land.
How brightly the assembly of stars burns above me,
the divinitys living thoughts!
What a night has thickened upon the earth,
and how dead this earth is in the sight of the heavens!
A storm springs up and a wind, and a desolate leaf is eddied!
And for me, me, like the dead leaf,
it is time to leave lifes valley.
Bear me away, tempestuous ones, carry off this orphan!,,,

a poem by Tyutchev,,,translated by,f,jude