Setting Suns

The sun set this evening in the clouds.
Tomorrow, the storm shall come, and the evening, and the night;
Then the dawn will clear the dark mists;
Then the nights, then the days, the footprints of vanishing time!

All these days will pass; they will pass in crowds
Over the face of the seas, over the face of the mountains,
Over rivers of silver, over the rolling forests
Like a distant hymn for our beloved dead.

And the face of the waters, and the brow of the mountains,
Wrinkled but not aged, and the woods evergreen
Will return to them their youth: the river of the country
Forever takes the tide from the hills to the seas.

But I, lowering my head more with each day,
I go, and, cooled under the merry sun,
I will depart soon, amid the celebrations,
Unmissed by the vast and blinding world.

Victor Hugo