Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MY HEAVEN, by RENE FRANCOIS ARMAND PRUDHOMME


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MY HEAVEN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I love the fresh, sweet charm of vernal skies in may
Last Line: -- more frightful unto me than the midnight of the tomb.
Alternate Author Name(s): Sully-prudhomme
Subject(s): Death; Heaven; May (month); Nature; Seasons; Time; Dead, The; Paradise


I LOVE the fresh, sweet charm of vernal skies in May,
But when my spirit broods upon the infinite,
From that eternal void I needs must turn away;
Its grandeur, its immobile calm my thoughts outwit.

So, when I read Pascal, his sombre pious page
Humbles my beggared soul and leaves me crazed and thrawn;
And the zenith's eerie height doth but the pit presage,
Wherein Man's purple pride becomes Dejection's pawn.

I am as newborn babe, whose first reluctant look
In the shadow of the vast as mote seems still to swim;
Whose instinct draws it back to the realm too soon forsook,
When in its nurse's breast it flies the visage grim.

As one, who, dying, looks upon the objects near,
Their semblance sicklied o'er with night's funereal hue;
Swinging on spider's thread unto celestial tier,
I clutch the fleeting hours of Time's swift retinue.

Yea, thus before the heaven where dwells the mystery,
As sport of ignorant thoughts, presentiments, and fears,
With trembling hands I clasp the earth that nurtured me,
And blindly stoop to kiss and lave it with my tears.

And deeper in my cell as trembling monk I shrink;
I only wish to breathe my hostel's quiet air.
It is not given to me to look beyond heaven's brink
Into the face of God, whose deeps I must forbear.

The living, lonely God, who speaks not in the Book,
The God who neither strikes nor blesses mortal man,
Whose silent majesty and proud and lofty look
Smile on our earthly coil and crush our feeble span.

Keep in thy holy heights thy sacred solitude,
Indifferent Lord asleep in cosmos without end!
Inspired by hope and love, by pain and grief pursued,
What if I sometimes weep on the forehead of a friend!

For me there is the shade of scintillating woods;
For thee there is the day of even-rounded hours!
For me there is the nest of sweet disquietudes;
For thee thy jealous watch from cold, inviolate towers.

Life lifts thee on for aye. 'Tis well that I should die;
In the all-embracing swoon Love's brother we discern.
Somewhere I left my gods, my dwelling built on high,
To which through doors of death my hope 'tis to return.

Death urgeth not to thee, though he our heads abase;
And though thy puissant arms about our bourne are pressed,
Too puny are our own to measure thine embrace.
Ah, who has felt thy heart beat in thy lonely breast?

Ah, no, my paradise is bright with Eden's green,
And there my father stands to greet me with a kiss.
I shall be where I was and see what I have seen
And greet them in that world who said farewell in this.

And I shall feel the pulse of passions born anew,
The friendship ne'er betrayed, unfrozen by despair,
And haply through the mist thy smile will filter through
On me, whose eyes looked love when thou wert unaware.

But there I would not see Earth in its natal throes
Or feel the insipid warmth of Spring's eternal birth.
I sigh for Autumn's calm and melancholy glows,
For Winter sage and hoar and Summer's fiery mirth.

Such is my paradise. Nought else can I conceive
More human and divine, though lovelier havens bloom.
Seers and ascetic souls, to you your heaven I leave
-- More frightful unto me than the midnight of the tomb.





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