Go from me

Nay, go from me, I plead with you;

In vain, so young and pretty too,

You would free my heart of sadness:

Can you not see, to my sorrow,

That my brow pale and sans morrow

Must no longer smile at gladness?

When winter with outbreaths that freeze

The flowers gleaming in our leas

Frosts the breast that has long since blown,

Who will restore to one dead leaf

Its perfumes wind takes like a thief

And its luster that is now flown!

Oh! if I had met you only

When my soul drunken and lonely

Palpitated with life and love,

With what transport, what vertigo

I’d have come your smile sweet to know

Whose charm had fed me like a dove.

But nowadays, o winsome girl!

Your face, is but the star aswirl

In the troubled eyes of sailors,

Whose very ship on verge of wreck,

Just as the thunders cease to beck

Splits and sinks beneath the breakers.

Nay, go from me, I plead with you;

In vain, so young and pretty too,

You would free my heart of sadness:

On this brow pale and sans morrow

Can you not see how that sorrow

Has exiled all hope of gladness?

Gérard de Nerval