Sully Prudhomme - Les vieilles maisons versuri traducere în engleză

Ancient houses

I don't like new houses:
their face is indifferent.
The old ones look like widows
remembering and crying.
 
The cracks in their old plaster
seem like the wrinkles of an elderly.
Their greenish window panes
seem to cast a benevolent sad glance!
 
Their doors are hospitable,
for these gates have aged well.
Their walls are familiar
for all the welcoming they did.
 
The keys rust in locks there
for the hearts have no secrets left.
Time dulls the gilding there
but makes the portraits more true.
 
Dear voices sleep within them,
and in the big bed curtains,
a breath of fatherly soul
still ripples the old drapes.
 
I love sooth blackened fireplaces
whence swallows or rain
can be heard in the air
as spring and winter come.
 
I love those stairs that are climbed
on broad and low steps
by feet that know their count so well
for having bent them inder their weight.
 
I love the sagging roof, the attic
and its worm-eaten beams
that brings back under its frame
memories of bygone woods.
 
What I love most is the only beam
crossing the great hall
where the family gathers
that bears the full weight of the home.
 
Unmoving and busy,
it supports like in the past
the wary and cheerful kind
that still trust its wood.
 
It doesn't break under the load,
although its cracked sides
feel their wounds widening
and are all riddled by worms.
 
Drawing from an unknown strength,
pulling its last bits together,
the valiant oak still holds firm
under the rhythm of craddles.
 
Yet the children are growing older.
The beam is already bending.
It will further give way,
some ingrate will put it to the fire.
 
And, after burning it,
the memories of its good deed
will go up in smoke.
It will be utterly gone.
 
Truly dead indeed,
among all kinds of remains
scattered under many names,
for dead things have no offsprings.
 
As worn out maids
pass out in isolation,
things fall and are despised
and meet their ultimate end.
 
This is why, as the rubbles
of old houses are put to the flame,
a dreamer feels souls burning
among the embers' blue flashes.
 
This translation does not claim to be of any particular value.
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You can reuse it as you please.
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