The Cemetery of Amboise

THE CEMETERY

Would have seen slipping into the dates of the times?
A false calculation, which ignorance adopts or produces,
Destroys neither the object nor the essence of the bases.
Rise then to those laws which never change:
The spirit loves to engrave its features in nature;
This imprint is followed exactly by her;
Death itself only copies life.
But when the spirit paints these great notions for you,
And thereby reopens the holy regions to you;
Man makes of it the torch of error and crime,
And walks along the edge of the void or the abyss."

"Say to them: You, writers, illustrious orators,
Who come, you say, to dissipate our errors,
Could you not reach the most beautiful of your rights?
What poetry has the audacity to feign,
Your vivid eloquence has the right to operate.
In the chaire pulpit or professor's chair, try never to enter,
Except in the sole name of him from whom the word proceeds;
Prodigies then filling your school,
Will know how to ensure the progress of wisdom.
Just as a poet instructed in these secrets,
Who would truly be the oracle of the art of speaking,
Would not make a verse without making a miracle.
Yes, our tongues might have only to bless you:
But if you prefer to make yourselves applauded;
If, being the interpreters of illusion,
You come among us like the false prophets,
To divert the word to your own profit;
Or else to say in its name what it has not said,
Your words one day will be imputed to you,
Or, like a false metal, they will be treated."

"Say to the man of good: walk with a broken heart;
Groaning over evil, and ceaselessly set ablaze"