Song of Fatherland Love

Song of Fatherland Love

by Paul Verlaine

Translated by Roberto Hope from a Spanish version made 
from the French original by Father Leonardo Castellani.

To love the homeland is the first of loves,
and it is the last one after God;
if it is crucified and unfeigned,
becomes a single love, not two anymore.

To love the fatherland, even to risk one's life
in the pursuit of the homeland´s common good,
withstanding the upwellings and the furious winds:
Such is inscribed to the credit of God.

God who cannot be seen, the inscrutable God;
of everything that's good, obscure abyss,
perceptible through Faith alone 
blind as blind may be.

Cannot love, despite how much of Him he speaks,
he who from the bottom of his icy self
is unable to love what he can´t see.