The Cemetery of Amboise

On this mound, near the place that saw me born,
I wandered alone. Our graves, in this rural site,
Inspired in me a sweet and religious attraction.
Wise Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, 1694 to 1748, a Swiss legal philosopher whose works on natural law influenced the author. Burlamaqui, it is not far from these places
That you sanctified the dawn of my age;
That a sacred fire, emerging from your profound work,
Agitating my whole body with holy shudders,
Engraved within me the foundations of justice:
Favors, in my springtime, so new, so divine!
But which hid, alas! stinging thorns!
Time made them bloom. So I meditated
On our days of sorrow. Pensively, I measured
That long blindness called life.
What torments! What disgusts! In my melancholy,
I distinguished nothing. All around these fields,
I hardly saw those elegant gardens
Where Etienne-François, Duke of Choiseul, 1719 to 1785, who owned the nearby estate of Chanteloup. Choiseul displayed pomp and opulence;
Those modest rocks inhabited by poverty;
That famous castle The Château d'Amboise. which once saw the birth
Of the too-famous misfortunes of the reign of the Valois the royal house of France from 1328 to 1589.
A mourning even seemed to me, oh! plaintive nature,
To veil all these treasures of which you make your finery;
These harvests, these forests, these scattered animals,
This river, this beautiful sky offered to my sight.
Happy is he who can still, contemplating your works,
Draw from them each day sublime images;
And knowing how to spread a brilliant coloring,
Touch all hearts while striking the minds!
But, man, dear object of my concern,
It is you who forbid me this attractive study;
It is your hand that covered nature with mourning,
And made of her throne a dismal coffin;
And when everything is snatched from me in this place of distress,