Automne au ciel brumeux, aux horizons navrants,
Aux rapides couchants, aux aurores pâlies,
Je regarde couler, comme l'eau du torrent,
Tes jours faits de mélancolies.
Sur l'aile des regrets mes esprits emportés,
Comme s'il se pouvait que notre âge renaisse! _
Parcourent, en rêvant, les coteaux enchantés
Où jadis sourit ma jeunesse.
Je sens, au clair soleil du souvenir vainqueur,
Refleurir en bouquet les roses déliées,
Et monter à mes yeux des larmes, qu'en mon cur,
Mes vingt ans avaient oubliées!
Autumn of misty skies, of heart-rendinghorizons,
of quick sunsets, of pallid dawns,
I watch your days of melancholy
flowing past like the water of the torrent.
On the wing of regrets my spirits, borne away,
_as if our years could be reborn_
dreaming, wander the enchanted hills
where my youth once smiled!
I feel, in the bright sun of the victorious memory,
the untied roses blooming again in bouquets
and, rising to my eyes, tears which, in my heart,
my twenty years had forgotten!
© translated by Christopher Goldsack
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