nt ton doux visage,
Je pense aux joncs de mon ruisseau!

Veux-tu qu'en amoureux fideles
Nous revenions dans ces pres verts?
Libellule, reprends tes ailes;
Moi, je brulerai tous mes vers!

Et nous irons, sous la lumiere,
D'un ciel plus frais et plus leger
Chacun dans sa forme premiere,
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."

Victor Hugo also has a littl