Title: To love
Poet: Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786-1859)

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Take from this bouquet the deceptive colors,
These letters that are my torture,
This portrait which was your accomplice;
He looks like you, he laughs, all bathed in my tears.

I return to you this fatal treasure,
This cold witness of my awful boredom.
Your burning memory, which I hate,
Will soon be cold like him.

Oh ! Take back everything. If my hand is still shaking,
Because I thought I saw you in these traits that I abhor.
Yes, I thought I met the eyes of a deceiver;
This ghost has troubled my timid courage.

Heaven! We can therefore die at the sight of a perfidious,
If his shadow is so scary!
Like those stray lights whose reflection is misleading,
The flame of his eyes has passed before me;

I blush to forget that finally everything separates us;
But I only blush for you.
May my cold feelings express themselves with difficulty!
Love ... that I hate you for teaching me hatred!

Stay away, repeat these deceptive colors,
These letters, which are my torture,
This portrait, who was your accomplice;
He looks like you, he laughs, all bathed in my tears!

Hide at least my cruel anger that sends you,
Say that I broke everything, without tears, without efforts;
In painting his painful transports,
You would give him too much joy.

Take back too, take back the dangerous writings,
Where, hiding under flowers his first artifice,
He wanted to try his novice cruelty
On a simple and unhappy heart.

When you still want to misplace innocence,
When you want to see burn and languish,
When you want to make love and die,
Do not borrow other eloquence.

The art of seduction is there, as it is in his heart!
Go ! You do not need any more study.
Be gentle with addiction, ungrateful by habit,
Give fever, love, and keep cool.

Do not change the confessions full of charms
Whose magic leads to despair:
You can from each word calculate the power,
And choose those still impregnated with my tears ...

He does not dare to answer me, he flies away ... he is far away.
May he of an ungrateful eternal absence!
It should proudly smile in his presence:
I prefer to suffer without witnesses.

He will not come back, he knows that I abhor him;
I said it to love, who already fled.
If he dared to come back, I would say it again:
But we approach, we speak ... alas! It is not him !

Marceline Desbordes-Valmore.