When I believe in God

[blatch]

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