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Far-niente
When I have nothing to do, and only a cloud
In the blue fields of the sky, wool flakes, swims,
I like to listen to myself live, and, free of worries,
Far from the powdery roads, to remain seated
on a soft carpet of fern and moss,
At the edge of the thick woods where the heat fades.
There, to kill time, I observe the ant
Who, thinking of the return of the enemy winter,
For its attic steals a grain of barley from the sheaf,
The aphid that climbs and hangs itself from the blade of grass,
The caterpillar dragging its velvety rings,
The slug with silver furrows,
And the fresh butterfly that flies from flower to flower.
Then I look, frivolously amused,
at the breaking light in each of my eyelashes, the
Palisade opposite its subtle rays,
the seven colours of the prism, or the down that floats
In the air, as on the wave an unmanned vessel;
And when I am tired I let myself fall asleep,
At the murmur of the water that a stone makes moan,
Or I listen to sing near me the warbler,
And up there in the azure chirping the lark.
Théophile Gautier, First Poems
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