Soudain un caprice bizarre Change la scène et le décor, Et mon esprit au loin s'égare Sur des grands prés d'azure et d'or Où, près de ruisseaux muscules Gazouillants comme des oiseaux, Se poursuivent les libellules, Ces fleurs vivantes des roseaux. Enfant, n'es tu pas l'une d'elles Qui me poursuit pour consoler? Vainement tu caches tes ailes; Tu marches, mais tu sais voler. Petite fée au bleu corsage, Que j'ai connu dès mon berceau, En revoyant ton doux visage, Je pense aux joncs de mon ruisseau! Veux-tu qu'en amoureux fidèles Nous revenions dans ces prés verts? Libellule, reprends tes ailes; Moi, je brulerai tous mes vers! Et nous irons, sous la lumière, D'un ciel plus frais et plus léger Chacun dans sa forme première, Moi courir, et toi voltiger. "Suddenly a strange fancy changes for me the scene and the scenery; and my mind wanders far away over great meadows of azure and gold. "Where, hard by tiny streams that murmur with a sound like voices of little birds, the dragon-flies, those living flowers of the reeds, chase each other at play. "Child, art thou not one of those dragon-flies, following after me to console me? Ah, it is in vain that thou tryest to hide thy wings; thou dost walk, indeed, but well thou knowest how to fly! "O little fairy with the blue corsage whom I knew even from the time I was a baby in the cradle; seeing again thy sweet face, I think of the rushes that border the little stream of my native village! "Dost thou not wish that even now as faithful lovers we return to those green fields? O dragon-fly, take thy wings again, and I--I will burn all my poetry, "And we shall go back, under the light of the sky more fresh and pure than this, each of us in the original form--I to run about, and thou to hover in the air as of yore." The sight of a child's face has revived for the poet very suddenly and vividly, the recollection of the village home, the green fields of childhood, the little stream where he used to play with the same little girl, sometimes running after the dragon-fly. And now the queer fancy comes to him that she herself is so like a dragon-fly--so light, graceful, spiritual! Perhaps really she is a dragon-fly following him into the great city, where he struggles to live as a poet, just in order to console him. She hides her wings, but that is only to prevent other people knowing. Why not return once more to the home of childhood, back to the green fields and the sun? "Little dragon-fly," he says to her, "let us go back! do you return to your beautiful summer shape, be a dragon-fly again, expand your wings of gauze; and I shall stop trying to write poetry. I shall burn my verses; I shall go back to the streams where we played as children; I shall run about again with the joy of a child, and with you beautifully flitting hither and thither as a dragon-fly."