Victor Hugo (The Earth (Hymn), extract from : The Legend of the Centuries), She is the earth, she is the plain, she is the field. She is dear to all who sow as they walk on; She offers a mossy bed to the shepherd; Shivering, she warms herself in the eternal sun, Laughs, and makes a circle with the planets of the sky Like sisters around the hearth... She loves the ray propitious to the shifting wheat, And the formidable cleansing of the winds, And the breaths, which are lyres, And the lightning, a living brow which, when it shines and flees, Both terrifies and reassures the Night By force of frightening smiles... Glory to the earth! Glory to the dawn where God appears! To the swarming of open eyes in the forest, To the flowers, to the nests that the day gilds! Glory to the nocturnal whitening of the peaks! Glory to the blue sky that can, without ever exhausting itself, Make expenditures of aurora!... The earth loves this tranquil sky, equal for all, Whose serenity does not depend upon us, And which blends with our vile disasters, With our griefs, with the bursts of brazen laughter, With our malice, with our speed, The profound sweetness of the stars... The earth is calm beside the growling ocean; The earth is beautiful; she has the divine modesty Of hiding herself beneath the foliage; Spring her lover comes in May to kiss her; She sends to the haughty thunder to appease it The humble smoke of the villages... Do not strike, thunder. They are small, these ones. The earth is good; she is grave and severe too The roses are pure like her; Whoever thinks, hopes, and works pleases her; And the innocence offered to every man is her milk, And justice is her breast... The earth hides gold and shows the harvests; She places in the flank of the fleeting seasons The germ of coming seasons, In the azure the birds that whisper: let us love! And the springs in the depths of the shadow, and upon the mounts The immense trembling of the oaks.... Harmony is her august work under the heavens; She commands the reeds to greet, joyful And satisfied, the superb tree; For balance is the low loving the high; In order that the haughty cedar be in its right, there must be The consent of the blade of grass... She equalizes everything in the pit; and confounds With the dead cowherds the dust made By the Caesars and the Alexanders; She sends the soul to heaven and keeps the animal; She ignores, in her vast effacement of evil, The difference of two ashes... She pays each one his debt, to the day the night, To the night the day, grass to the rocks, fruit to the flowers; She nourishes what she creates, And the tree is confident when man is uncertain; O confrontation that puts destiny to shame, O great sacred nature!... She was the cradle of Adam and of Japheth, And then she is their tomb; and it is she who makes In Tyre that today is ignored, In Sparta and mourning Rome, in fallen Memphis, In all the places where man has spoken, then fell silent, The sounding cicada sing... Why?... To console the sleeping sepulchers... Why?... Because it is necessary to make to the collapses... Succeed the apotheoses, To the voices that say No the voices that say Yes, To the disappearances of the vanished man The mysterious song of things... The earth has for friends the reapers; in the evening, She would like to chase from the vast black horizon The bitter swarm of voracious crows, At the hour when the weary ox says: Let us return now; When the brown laborers return dragging The plowshares like cuirasses... She endlessly bears the flowers that last but little; Flowers never make reproaches to God; Of chaste lilies, of ripe vines, Of myrtles shivering in the wind, never a cry Ascends toward the venerable sky, moved By the innocence of murmurs... She opens an obscure book beneath the thick branches; She does her best, and lavishes peace Upon the rock, the tree, the plant, To enlighten us, us, sons of Cham and of Hermes, Who are condemned never to read Except by a trembling light... Her goal is birth and it is not death; It is the mouth that speaks and not the tooth that bites; When infamous war rushes forth Digging in man a vile furrow bathed in blood, Fierce, she turns away an indignant gaze From this sinister plow... Bruised, she asks men: To what use Is the havoc? What fruit will the desert produce? Why kill the green plain? She does not find the wicked useful, And weeps for the virginal beauty of the fields Dishonored to no purpose... The earth was once Ceres, Alma Ceres, Blue-eyed mother of wheats, meadows, and forests; And I hear her saying still: Sons, I am Demeter, goddess of gods; And you shall build me a radiant temple Upon the Callichore hill.........Upon the hill....
