Farewell poem

I bring you these verses, funereal rosebush,

already distant and dying,

painful child of my dreams.

I have seen you happy and beautiful, and now I bring you

these verses, like a bouquet of lilies on your beauty.

You learned too young that man is cruel

and the salt of life remained on your lip.

Your smile used to open on a May sky,

and your lids veiled under your lashes eyes

as blue as virgins

flowering in the nuptial shade.

And someone has left you alone, Ariane,

on the strand, doomed to perpetual exile.

The hot voluptuousness a-borning in your flesh

drenched in ardent, magnificent crimson

your colour, so delicate that it seemed woven from the air,

and your soul made your slender lip tremble.

I loved you in secret, poor girl,

in your hours of joy and above all your hours of pain.

I pitied you because I love you.

These verses would weep for the splendor of your body,

which will never know love. Accept them,

and in your bleak exile remain beautiful for a long time,

like a royal jewel in a sealed coffer.

Farewell. You cannot love me, you must not know.

I would have wished to sleep in your arms.

Alas! instead I must begin to live again!

Farewell, melancholy child, autumn soul,

evening sky full of plaintive doves,

oh beauteous, sweet, pure, solitary woman.