Tristement

by François Coppée

Obsessed by these words, widowhood and autumn,
My reverie seeks no other to express
This melancholy, vast and monotonous,
That robs me of all hope and all desire to love.

Ceaselessly, it evokes a long, long avenue
Of plane trees, immensely tall, half bare,
In which a woman in deep mourning veiled,
Moves slowly forward on the pallid grass.

Her long skirts leave behind a wake,
Trailing and rustling in the fallen leaves;
She follows with her gaze the passage of a cloud
Before the wind, driving from the north, already cold.

She thinks of him, now absent, who was wont to say: I love you!
And under the wide low sky from which the light has gone,
Sees that, with the last chrysanthemum, yesterday
The last butterfly has also died.

And so she walks across the faded grass,
Weary of wishing, weary of submitting,
And always in her path, the plane-tree leaves
Fall with a sound as sad as sighs.

—In vain, to chase away these gloomy images
Do I call upon my youth, and that splendid summer.
I do not trust the sun, no more believe the roses,
And go about, head lowered, like a haunted man.

My heart’s so full of autumn and of widowhood
That I forever dream, under a pure, clear sky—
Of one in mourning—in a chill landscape,
And the leaves falling at first winter’s wind.

Lane of Poplars at Sunset

by Vincent van Gogh