I picked this flower for you - Victor Hugo

I picked this flower for you on the hilltop.
In the steep scarp that overhangs the tide,
Which only eagles know and only they can reach,
Calmly she grew on the rock's creviced side.
Darkness was bathing all the slopes of the bleak promontory.
In the place where the sun was going down,
I could see— as a roseate triumphal
Arch is raised up in some victorious town—
The somber night erecting a portico of clouds.
Some miniature and distant sails sped by;
A few roofs, lit up in the bottom of a hollow,
Looked half afraid to glint and catch the eye.
I picked this flower there for you, my love—
Pale-colored, and the petals have no scent;
Her root could take in nothing, on those mountains,
Except the green weed's acrid effluent.
"Poor flower," I said, "from the height of this summit
You would have passed into that gaping pit
With the massed clouds, the sailing-ships and seaweed.
Die in a gulf even more infinite;
Fade on a heart in which a world is fluttering.
You were to drop your blossoms in the spray:
For Ocean heaven made you; but to Love I send you."
The wind mingled the swell; nothing of day
Was left beyond a vague gleam, slowly vanishing.
Sad indeed were my reveries, sad and stark,
While I stood dreaming there; the whole black chasm
Entered my soul with every chill of dark.

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Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885) France
Translated by E.H. Blackmore and A.M. Blackmore