Under the Sun of Satan (Sous le soleil de Satan) is Georges Bernanos's first published novel, appearing in 1926 in Paris.
“We are at that one of life's hours (it strikes for every man) when truth imposes itself, by itself, with irresistible obviousness, when each of us has only to stretch forth his arms to reach at a single bound the surface of shadows, even the sunlight of God. Then is human prudence but a snare and a delusion. Sanctity!' cried out the old priest in a deep voice; 'by saying this word in your presence and for you alone, I know the hurt I inflict upon you! You are not unaware of what sanctity is: a vocation, a calling. Up to the place where God awaits you you will have to climb – climb, or be lost. Expect no human help.”
Georges Bernanos, Under the Sun of Satan
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The Swallow
Theophile Gautier
I am a swallow, nothing like a dove;
My nature is to fly eternally,
The nest in which the pigeons find their love
Covered from sight, would be like death to me
I live in battlements and parapets,
When autumn falls I fly on the wind's breath,
Leaving black towers for snow-white minarets,
Fly to the constant blue: no rain, no death
No sky can hold me, nothing stays my flight,
Each land I pass through never less the stranger,
My absent friends living within my soul.
My love's eternal if my wing is light
And, unforgotten, this eternal ranger
Across the world stays steadfast to my goal.
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The Hurricane
Jose Maria de Heredia
Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh,
I know thy breath in the burning sky!
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein,
For the coming of the hurricane!
And lo! on the wing of the heavy gales,
Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails;
Silent and slow, and terribly strong,
The mighty shadow is borne along,
Like the dark eternity to come;
While the world below, dismayed and dumb,
Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere
Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear.
They darken fast; and the golden blaze
Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze,
And he sends through the shade a funeral ray —
A glare that is neither night nor day,
A beam that touches, with hues of death,
The clouds above and the earth beneath.
To its covert glides the silent bird,
While the hurricane's distant voice is heard,
Uplifted among the mountains round,
And the forests hear and answer the sound.
He is come! he is come! do ye not behold
His ample robes on the wind unfurled?
Giant of air! we bid thee hail!—
How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale;
How his huge and writhing arms are vent,
To clasp the zone of the firmament,
And fold at length, in the dark embrace,
From mountain to mountain the visible space.
Darker — still darker! the whirlwinds bear
The dust of the plains to the middle air:
And hark to the crashing, long and loud,
Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud!
You may trace its path by the flashes that start
From the rapid wheels where'er they dart,
And the fire-bolts leap to the world below,
And flood the skies with a lurid glow.
What roar is that? — 'tis the rain that breaks
In torrents away from the airy lakes,
Heavily poured on the shuddering ground,
And shedding a nameless horror round.
Ah! well known woods, and mountains, and skies,
With the very clouds! — ye are lost to my eyes.
I seek ye vainly, and see in your place
The shadowy tempest that sweeps the space,
A whirling ocean that fills the wall
Of the crystal heaven, and buries all.
And I, cut off from the world, remain
Alone with the terrible hurricane.
Translated by William Cullen Bryant
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