After Winter

 

Do not expect from me to give you
Reasons against God whom I see shining;
The night dies, winter flees; now the light,
In the fields, in the woods, is everywhere first.
I am vaguely softened by spring.
April is a child, frail, charming, and blooming;
I feel before childhood and before the zephyr
I don’t know what need to cry and laugh;
May completes my joy and adds to my tears.
Jeanne, George, hurry up, for here are the flowers.
Hurry, the forest sings, the azure turns golden,
You have no right to be absent from the dawn.
I am an old dreamer and I need you,
Come, I want to love, to be just, to be kind,
To believe, to thank the things vaguely,
To live without blaming the thorns on the roses,
To finally be a good man accepting the good God.
Oh spring! Sacred woods! Deeply blue sky!
One feels a breath of living air that penetrates you,
And the opening in the distance of a white window;
One mixes their thought with the chiaroscuro of the waters;
One has the sweet happiness of being with the birds
And seeing, under the shelter of the spring branches,
These gentlemen making manners with these ladies.

 

June 26, 1878
Victor Hugo