A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields/Soleil Couchant (Victor Hugo)
SOLEIL COUCHANT.
The sun set this evening in dense masses of cloud,
The storm comes to-morrow, then evening, then night,
Then the dawn in her chariot refulgent and proud,
Then the nights, then the days, steps of Time in his flight.
The days shall pass, rapid as birds on the wing,
O'er the face of the hills, o'er the face of the seas,
O'er rivers of silver, and o'er forests that ring
With a hymn for the dead, chanted low by the breeze.
And the face of the waters, the brow of the mountains
Deep-scarred but not shrivelled, and the woods tufted green,
Their youth shall renew; and the rocks to the fountains
Shall still yield what these yield to the ocean their queen.
But I, day after day, bending lower my head,
Pass, chilled in the sunlight, and soon, soon shall have cast,
In the height of the banquet, my lot with the dead,
Unmissed in the world, joyous, radiant, and vast.