C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Juana
By Alfred de Musset (1810–1857)
A
Of all my old loves that have been,
The first love and the tenderest;
Do you remember or forget—
Ah me, for I remember yet—
How the last summer days were blest?
The foolish hours of youth and bliss,
How fleet, how sweet, how hard to hold!
How old we are, ere spring be green!
You touch the limit of eighteen,
And I am twenty winters old.
Was brightest, ah, how pale she is!
Yet keeps the beauty of her prime;
Child, never Spanish lady’s face
Was lovely with so wild a grace;
Remember the dead summer-time.
And how you gave your chain of gold
To me for a peace-offering;
And how all night I lay awake
To touch and kiss it for your sake,—
To touch and kiss the lifeless thing.
This Love shall live another day,
Awakened from his deathly sleep:
The heart that once has been your shrine
For other loves is too divine;
A home, my dear, too wide and deep.
Why should I struggle with the stream
Whose waves return not any day?
Close heart, and eyes, and arms from me;
Farewell, farewell! so must it be,
So runs, so runs, the world away.
The swallows and the songs of spring,
And days that were, and days that flit:
The loved lost hours are far away;
And hope and fame are scattered spray
For me, that gave you love a day,
For you that not remember it.