Fleurs du midi
or
Flowers of the South

"My mother--at that very name
A balm flows upon my burning soul
To my other blood kin I am almost a stranger
I never knew a brother's tenderness, or a sister's love."

Louise Colet, 1926, Fleurs du midi, translation: (Gray, 27)

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Fleurs du midi is Louise Colet's first collection of poetry, published when she was just married. In this collection, Colet recalls her childhood without fondness. According to critic Francine du Plessix Gray, these poems "expressed a double alienation, one immediate, the other more symbolic: the alienation of a young woman misunderstood by her own blood kin, and the solitude of the Romantic artists martyred by the world's indifference" (26).