Dear Readers,
It's already Friday! Week 7 has ended! I can't believe that week 8 is going to start soon!
Today I want to share a beautiful poem by Victor Hugo. It is originally in french but I will share the translated version. I think that this poem defines its meaning very clearly. This is why I don't want to give my opinion, since it can also be interpreted in different ways. I will let the poem speak for itself. Here it is:
The Child
Victor Hugo
The Turks have been. Destruction everywhere.
Chios, the isle of vines, lies black and bare—
Chios, in the leaves' shade,
Whose seas used to reflect its wooded height,
Its slopes and villas, and sometimes at night
The girls who danced and played.
Deserted. No: beside the blackened stone
A blue-eyed child, a Greek child, sits alone,
And bows his downcast head.
His only stronghold and security
Is a white hawthorn—a bloom equally
Ignored among the dead.
Poor boy, barefooted on such crags and tors!
To wipe the tears from those clear eyes of your
Hued like the sea and sky,
So that their blue, stormy with weeping, may
Be lit with lightning-shafts of joy and play,
To lift your fair head high,
What do you want? What must we give you, child,
To tie and tidy pleasantly those wild
Ringlets of hair that billow
About you, never shamed by steel—that shed
Themselves in tears over your lovely head
Like the leaves on a willow?
What could relieve you, lad, from all your woes?
The lily, blue as your blue eyes, that grows
By dark pools in Iran?
Or the fruit of the Tuba, that huge tree
Whose shade a horse, galloping constantly,
Takes centuries to span?
Or might a lovely wood bird make you smile—
Singing like news, but in a sweeter style,
Or like cymbals but louder?
Flower, fruit, or wondrous bird—with is for you?
"My friend", says the Greek boy with eyes of blue,
"I want bullets and powder."
Day Thirty Five's Progress:
Today I finally decided that I will keep the last stanza in my poem. I changed one of the lines though. I had written, "to make up for", but that wasn't exactly what I meant, so I changed that phrasing, making it, "to remember". I also edited the small stanza about the silk scarf. I added how it was hand painted and I wrote what it represents. I also changed the small stanza about the traveling. Instead of saying the traveling that I will do, I wrote the traveling that I have done, and that I will do.
Hope you enjoyed Victor Hugo's poem!
~ Golden Ink
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