For I have portion in all things created;
My fecund breath has vivified dead spheres;
Yet, ah! through wild eternities of years
I wander still, unsatisfied, unsated!

Men praise me unaware, and many a nation
Bows low before the holy name of one
I sent to save, adoring thus my son,
Christ, born of me, the world's supposed salvation.

And as years pass in fructuous progression,
My labors, all incessant, thrive and grow,
And I, whose empire none can overthrow,
Yearn more and more for limitless possession.

For often, alas! when other loves have sued me,
Fair virgins die, immaculately free,
Buried in clay or in the moaning sea,
And, countenanced by Death, escape, elude me.

Then I, the germ-god, puissant and imperious,
Must fly to rend the stillness of their tombs,
And in the sepulchers' phantasmal glooms
Regain my ravished rights in ways mysterious.


Yet I, the lord of all, cry out in anger;
One being hath life I can not call my own,
One miracle, one essence, one alone,
One that I crave for in delirious languor.

In her the roots of all things fair are blended;
She deigns to be, impeccable, sublime;
And since God murmured, " Let there now be time, "
She has existed, procreant and splendid.

And I, oh shame! I, who should be partaker,
Feel that her form I never shall possess;
For she in all her infinite stateliness
Is loved by God, my master and my maker!