So as to write my eclogues in the purest verse
I wish to lay me down, like the astrologers,
Next to the sky, and hear in reverie the hymns
Of all the neighbouring belfries, carried on the wind.
My two hands to my chin, up in my attic room,
I'll see the atelier singing a babbled tune;
The chimney-pipes, the steeples, all the city's masts,
The great, inspiring skies, magnificent and vast.
How sweet it is to see, across the misty gloom,
A star born in the blue, a lamp lit in a room,
Rivers of chimney smoke, rising in purplish streams,
The pale of glow of the moon, transfiguring the scene.
I will look out on springs and summers, autumn's show,
And when the winter comes, in monotone of snow,
I'll lock up all the doors and shutters neat and tight,
And build a fairy palace for myself at night.
So I will dream of bright horizons in the blue
Where fountains weep in pools of alabaster hue,
Of kisses in the glades, where birds sing night and day,
Of all to make an idyll in a childish way.
Riot,' that rages vainly at my window glass,
Will never make me raise my forehead from my task,
Since I am plunged in this voluptuous delight
Of conjuring the spring with all the poet's might,
Of hauling forth a sun out of my heart, with care
Transmuting furious thoughts to gently breathing air.