When I believe in God

Do you recall how life was kind
When youth and hope still filled our breast,
And we’d no other thought in mind
Than to be lovers and well-dressed?

When your age added in with mine
Made forty by our reckoning;
And, paupers, we did not repine,
For every winter’s day was spring.

Brave days of modesty and pride,
When Paris was a lover’s feast!
I brought you flowers at Eastertide,
And pricked my finger on your breast.

And men’s eyes watched you with desire
When in the crowded streets we strolled.
Your beauty was a living fire
That had no thought of growing old;

No thought of strife and angry men,
Heads bowed beneath the tyrant’s rod …
When first I kissed you, it was then,
Ah, then, that I believed in God…

from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo