En anglais :
"I SING the progress of a deathless soul,
Whom fate, which God made, but doth not control,
Placed in most shapes; all times, before the law
Yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing.
And the great world to his agèd evening
From infant morn, through manly noon, I draw.
What the gold Chaldee, or silver Persian saw,
Greek brass, or Roman iron, is in this one;
A work to outwear Seth’s pillars, brick and stone,
And—Holy Writ’s excepted—made to yield to none."
C'est en fait Borges ( in Conférences, Le bouddhisme ) qui cite cette phrase de Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Les vers exacts du poème sont les suivants :
"I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turn'd so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?"
