From "Épître XVIII. Au maréchal Keith":
...Un père dont le cœur est tendre à ses enfants
Serait-il parmi nous assez dur et bizarre
Pour accabler son fils d'un châtiment barbare,
Si ce malheureux fruit de sa fécondité
Le choquait, en naissant, par sa difformité[1]?
Un fils dénaturé[2] peut irriter son père
Et se voir écrasé du poids de sa colère;
Mais nous, contre les dieux que peut notre fureur?
Rien ne peut altérer leur éternel bonheur.
[...]
J'implore ton secours, ô divine Uranie!
Accorde à ma raison les ailes du génie,
Montre-moi la nature au feu de tes clartés :
Heureux qui peut connaître et voir tes vérités!
OR
My rough translation:
...A father whose heart is tender to his children
Would he be[,] between us[,] cruel and inhumane enough
To bring down on his son a barbaric chastisement,
If that unhappy fruit of his seed
Had shocked him, at birth, by his deformity?
An unnatural son may agitate his father
And see himself crushed under the weight of his anger;
But us, against the gods what can our fury do?
Nothing may alter their eternal happiness....[3]
[...][4]
I implore your help, O Divine Urania![5]
Give to my reason the wings of genius,
Show me the fiery nature of your lights:
Happy is he who knows and sees your truths!
I need to do a thorough reading of the whole poem eventually, but it's very long and I hope I've made some kind of point.'
Notes
edit- ^ Défaut dans les proportions...Il se dit figurément des choses morales. (e.g.) "La difformité du vice."/Defect in proportions; Figuratively, refers to moral matters. "The deformity of vice"; Vice being Défaut, imperfection...Faute...Une habitude de l'ame qui porte au mal; & en ce sens il est opposé à Vertu/Defect, imperfection, fault; a disposition of the soul that brings one to evil and is opposed to virtue.
- ^ Qui manque d'affection & de tendresse pour ses plus proches parens....Qui est contraire aux sentimens naturels d'affection & de tendresse/One who has no affection or tenderness for one's closet relatives, OR That which is contrary to natural feelings of affection and tenderness (both synonyms of amour/love)
- ^ I read these lines as: "The gods" are the indomitable will of his father, "their eternal happiness" is his father's ideal world.
- ^ A couple of stanzas that I read as: I want to outdo my dad/prove him wrong, but at the same time he had his good qualities and cared about me in his own way, but regardless whatever I do now doesn't actually affect him, though may God have mercy on his soul; I need to focus on the here and now.
- ^ Almost certainly the muse and reference to Voltaire's poem "Le Pour et le Contre" as a muse of the whole Enlightenment (as a god of the physical, not ethereal, heavens), but I'm spitballing here.