A Translation of La Statue, by Victor Hugo.

He seemed to shiver, for the wind was keen.
'Twas a poor statue underneath a mass
Of leafless branches, with a blackened back
And green foot—an old isolated Faun
In old deserted park, who, bending forward,
Half merged himself in the entangled boughs,
Half in his marble settings. He was there,
Pensive, and bound to the earth; and, as all things,
Devoid of movement, he was there—forgotten.
Trees were around him, whipped by the icy blasts—
Gigantic chestnuts, without leaf or bird,
And, like himself, grown old in that same place.
Through the dark network of their undergrowth,
Pallid his aspect; and the earth was brown.
Starless and moonless, a rough winter's night
Was letting down her lappets o'er the mist.
Trees more remote, with sombre shafts upreared,
Each other crossed; and trees remoter still,
By distance blurred, threw up to the grey sky
Their thousand twigs sharp-pointed, intricate;
And posed themselves around; and through the fog
Took, on the horizon's verge, the shadowy form
Of mighty porcupines in countless herd.
This—nothing more: old Faun, dull sky, dark wood.
Piercing the mist, perchance there might be seen
A distant terrace—its long layers of stone
Tinted with slimy green; or group of Nymphs,
Dimly defined beside a wide-spread basin,
And shrinking—fitly in this desolate park—
As once from gazers, from neglect to-day.
The old Faun was laughing. In their dubious haze
Leaving the shamed Nymphs and their dreary basin—
The old Faun was laughing—'twas to him I came
Moved to compassion, for these sculptors all
Are pitiless ever, and, content with praise,
Doom Nymphs to shame, condemn the Fauns to laughter.
Poor helpless marble, how I've pitied it
Less often man—the harder of the two.
So then, without a word that might offend
His ear difformed—for well the marble hears
The voice of thought—I said to him: "You hail
From the gay amorous age; O Faun, what saw you,
When you were happy? Were you of the Court?
Did you take part in fÊtes?—For your diversion
These Nymphs were fashioned. In this wood, for you,
Capable hands mingled the gods of Greece
With Roman CÆsars; made rare vases peer
Into clear waters; and this garden vext
With tortuous labyrinths. When you were happy,
O Faun, what saw you? All the secrets tell
Of that too vain yet captivating past,
Thick set with prudent love-makers, a past
In which great poets jostled mighty Kings.
How fresh your memory—you are laughing still!
Speak to me, comely Faun, as you would speak
To tree, or zephyr, or untrodden grass.
From end to end of this well-shaded alley,
When near you, with the handsome Lautrec, passed
The soft-eyed Marguerite, the Bearnaise Queen,
Have you, O Greek, O mocker of old days,
Have you not sometimes with that oblique eye
Winked at the Farnese Hercules?—Alone,
In cave as it were of foliage green and moist,
Have you, O Faun, considerately turned
From side to side when counsel-seekers came,
And now advised as shepherd; now as satyr?
Have you sometimes upon this very bench
Seen at mid-day, Vincent de Paul instilling
Grace into Gondi?—Have you ever thrown
That searching glance on Louis with Fontange,
On Anne with Buckingham; and did they not
Start, with flushed cheeks, to hear your laugh ring forth
From corner of the wood?—Was your advice
As to the thyrsis or the ivy asked,
When, the grand ballet of fantastic form,
God Phoebus, or god Pan, and all his court
Turned the fair head of the fair Montespan,
Calling her Amaryllis?—La Fontaine,
Flying the courtiers' ears of stone, came he,
Tears in his eyelids, to reveal to you
The sorrows of his Nymphs of Vaux?—What said
Boileau to you, to you, O lettered Faun,
Who once with Virgil, in the Eclogue, held
That charming dialogue, and deftly made—
Couched on the turf—the heavy spondee dance
To the light dactyl's step?—Say, have you seen
Young beauties sporting on the sward: Chevreuse
Of the swimming eyes, Thiange of airs superb?
Have they sometimes, in rosy-tinted group,
Girt you so fondly round, that all at once
A straggling sunbeam on a fluttering bosom
Marked your lascivious profile?—Has your tree
Received beneath the quiet of its shade
Pale Mazarin's scarlet winding sheet?—Have you
Been honoured with a sight of MoliÈre
In dreamy mood? Has he perchance at times,
Dropping at random a melodious verse,
In tone familiar—as is the wont
'Twixt demi-gods—addressed you?—When at eve
Homeward hereby the thinker went, has he
Who—seeing souls all naked—could not fear
Your nudity, in his enquiring mind
Confronted you with Man? And did he deem
You, spectral cynic, the less sad, less cold,
Less wicked, less ironical—comparing
Your laugh in marble with our human laugh?"
Under the thickly tangled branches, thus
Did I speak to him; he no answer gave—
Not even a murmur. On the pedestal
Leaning, I listened; but the past stirred not.
Dumb to my words and to my pity deaf,
The Satyr, motionless, was vaguely blanched
By the wan glimmer of the dying day.
To see him there, sinister, half drawn out
From his dark framing, and by damp discoloured,
Brought to one's mind the handle of a sword
In torso chiselled—an old rusty sword,
Left for long years neglected in its sheath.
I shook my head, and moved myself away.
Then, from the copses, from the dried up boughs
Pendent above him, from secret caves
Hid in the wood, methought a ghostly voice
Came forth and woke an echo in my soul,
As in the hollow of an amphora.
"Imprudent poet," thus it seemed to say,
"What dost thou here? Leave the forsaken Fauns
In peace beneath their trees! Dost thou not know,
Poet, that ever it is impious deemed,
In desert spots where drowsy shades repose—
Though love itself might prompt thee—to shake down
The moss that hangs from ruined centuries,
And, with the vain noise of thine ill-timed words,
To mar the recollections of the dead?"
Then to the gardens all enwrapped in mist
I hurried, dreaming of the vanished days.
And still the tree-tops were with mystery rife;
And still, behind me—hieroglyph obscure
Of antique alphabet—the lonely Faun
Held to his laughter, through the falling night.
I went my way; but yet—in saddened spirit
Pondering on all that had my vision crossed,
Floating in air or scattered under foot,
Confused and blent, beauty and spring and morn,
Leaves of old summers, fair ones of old time—
Through all, at distance would my fancy see,
In the woods, statues; shadows in the past!