Chrysalis
by José Asunción Silva, translated from Spanish by Wikisource

Translated from the Spanish by Zach Powell.

30202ChrysalisJosé Asunción Silva

When the girl was still sick
She went out one day
And went across, with unsure step
The neighboring mountain,
She found, on a branch of wildflowers
a hidden chrysalis,
That she hung in her room, very close
To her white bed
...............................
Some days later, in the moment
In which she passed away,
And everyone saw her, with their eyes
Clouded with tears,
In the instant in which she died, we felt
The light sound of wings
And we saw escape, taking flight
Through the old window
That looked out over the garden, a small
Golden butterfly....
...............................
The prison, now empty of the insect
I sought with rapid gaze;
On seeing it I saw the dead girl
Her forehead withered and pale,
And I thought, 'if when it leaves its sad jail,
The winged butterfly,
The light it finds and immense space,
And the country winds,
On leaving the prison that encloses them
What will our souls find?'

 This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

Translation:

This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, which allows free use, distribution, and creation of derivatives, so long as the license is unchanged and clearly noted, and the original author is attributed.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse