The Grandmother

It’s three years now she’s dead and gone my grandmother

—The good woman—and when they put her down,

Friends, relations, everyone broke down

In sorrow truly unfeigned and truly bitter.

I alone wandered in the house, surprised

More than grieving; and, when I approached

Her casket—someone or other me reproached

For seeing that with no tears at all and no cries.

Burning sorrow is very quickly passed:

Three years on, many other emotions,

Hap good, hap ill—veritable revolutions—

Have in hearts its memory effaced.

I alone bethink it, and weep my fill;

Three years on, with time just gaining strength,

Like a name graven on some great tree-trunk,

Its memory digs deep and deeper still!

Gérard de Nerval