The Cemetery of Amboise

Your reason, aggravating the grief that oppresses me,
Wishes still to close the way to your heart,
And leave my sorrow to be isolated in my own.
I compared the different caprices of fate,
Successes, setbacks, wealth, and injustices,
Coming like blind things from its blind hands,
Following, like blind things, the blind humans.
Sadly, I said to myself: Without a common law,
Which alone might balance these games of fortune,
And which, uniting us by an equal destiny,
Might serve as a beacon in our darkness,
Man would no longer know his origin;
Believing himself separated from the divine source,
He would create Gods for himself, and his imprudent vows
Would offer his incense to the stars or to chance.
But this severe decree that a sovereign law
Pronounces with brilliance to the human family,
This decree which says only to us: you must die;
And which we alone know before undergoing it,
Opposes its barrier to such wanderings,
And sheds a vivid light upon our being.
Death, by forcing us into fraternity,
Wishes to paint for our spirit that holy unity
Where love awaits us; where piety shines;
Where, in a pure dwelling, the father of the family,
Lavishing treasures that are constantly reborn,
Delights in merging with all his children;
And has nothing that his heart does not share with them.
Let us take the testimony of nature here.
Every body is the product of concentrated elements,
Which seem to be frustrated of their liberty.
Each of them, in leaving the corporeal form,
Goes by degrees to find its original base.