Is there a thing that renders hearts more tranquille
Than this sky in veil, adorned with blinking stars?
Is there a thing that strikes minds more with awe
Than this grand gift of nature to her denizens?
There the planets glide, in a sea cold and empty
There the forest palace surrounded by solemn torches
There the lofty city overflowing with lustre
O what is there! There beyond the dark canvas!
How many wondered as they gazed up at night!
There engraved, and the fleeting years could not erode it
Signs and wishes, glory and minds which, traversing the river of time
Yet had fuel enough to set the horizon alight.

What is present? --Tomorrow's past.
All those moments, of joy or sadness
In the blink of an eye has become memory
Like a drop of rain, falling high, now found itself
Splashed onto a scene of fleeting fulguration
Clamour silenced, stopped dead in its trajet
Blurred and distorted by the suffocating wind.
Time is a horse that never knows fatigue
Though its rider feels weariness mounting towards him;
He gazes at the stations past, the new landscape
The looming outlines of mountains approaching
Or rather he approaches; the past is a pond
The future is a waterfall, and the present shivers
Between the motions of these two titanic machines.

Do we not fear that the sky might fall?
Do we not tremble at the name of death?
What is reality, so superior to dreams
But a dream more vivid, more eternal?