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TO MONSIEUR GENONVILLE. - Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire, Vol. X The Dramatic Works Part 1 (Zaire, Caesar, The Prodigal, Prefaces) and Part II (The Lisbon Earthquake and Other Poems). [1901]

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From The Works of Voltaire, A Contemporary Version, (New York: E.R. DuMont, 1901), A Critique and Biography by John Morley, notes by Tobias Smollett, trans. William F. Fleming. Vol. X The Dramatic Works Part 1 (Zaire, Caesar, The Prodigal, Prefaces) and Part II (The Lisbon Earthquake and Other Poems).

Part of: The Works of Voltaire. A Contemporary Version, in 21 vols.

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TO MONSIEUR GENONVILLE.

  • Impute me not friend, a self-love so extreme,
  • Like Chaulieu, to make myself always my theme;
  • But let me that exquisite pleasure enjoy,
  • Of friendly converse which never can cloy;
  • When thought meets with thought, o’er the lip it departs,
  • And both utter freely what they feel in their hearts.
  • You remember, my friend, how my muse in weak lays,
  • Whilst yet I was young made some efforts for praise;
  • You saw calumny vile, all her snakes on her crest,
  • The spring of my genius with malice infest:
  • In a horrible dungeon unjustly confined,
  • Amidst my misfortunes with spirit resigned;
  • From evil I learned to gather some good,
  • And the strokes of adversity bravely withstood;
  • With a constancy which I could never presage,
  • From the levity common in so tender an age:
  • Why have I not since been as resolute found?
  • At slighter attacks I have oft given ground.
  • How often with tears love has made my eyes flow,
  • False rogue as you are, without doubt you must know;
  • You, who with an address which must needs be admired,
  • The possession of what I love most have acquired;
  • Who seized on my mistress, and was not content
  • To get her with ease, and her lover’s consent:
  • But I loved you, false friend, notwithstanding your fault,
  • I forgot and forgave as a good Christian ought.
  • Ah! why do I dwell on ideas long past?
  • Love once was my bliss, but that bliss could not last.
  • Now a cruel disease undermines my whole frame,
  • And it shortly, perhaps, will extinguish life’s flame;
  • The fates have, I doubt, almost spun out my thread,
  • And to all sense of pleasure my organs are dead;
  • I feel with surprise that I’m void of desire,
  • And my heart glows no longer with love’s vivid fire:
  • A chaos of thought quite perplexes my head,
  • My present state’s bad, and the future I dread;
  • To increase my affliction, my memory’s employed
  • On ideas of bliss that can’t now be enjoyed:
  • But what still is worse, I perceive it apace,
  • That my mental endowments begin to decrease;
  • The particle subtile of heavenly fire,
  • Before my corporeal frame does expire:
  • And can this then be the emanation so bright,
  • Which flows from the great source of all mental light?
  • Which lives when our bodies are laid in the earth,
  • With the organs of sense every mind has its birth;
  • With them it grows up, and with them feels decrease,
  • And shall its existence like theirs at length cease:
  • I know not, but I have good hope it will brave
  • Death, the ruins of time, and the jaws of the grave;
  • And that an intelligent substance so pure,
  • The Almighty intended should always endure.