[Brian Allgar]

Martin, thanks for the attempt!

The phrase "y a" is pronounced as one syllable, so I'm afraid the syllable count must stand at 7.

I certainly hear the the first syllable of "enfouie" in the sung French version, and the note cannot be dropped without distorting the tune. At one point, I had thought of translating it as "enshrouded", which fits very well, but it sounded far too "poetic" for the diction of the piece.

I don't think that either "beautiful day" or "beauty of day" will do for "beautiful as the day" - neither of them sounds as if it refers to a person - and "ended by the night" is rather an odd phrase, not at all the same thing as "buried in the night". (Before abandoning the acrostic, my original version began "Bright as the day/Enshrouded in the night".)

The third line is in some ways the trickiest of all. Even in French, "Tu es amour" is (sorry, Pascal) not a good line.

I don't like "The face" or "The smiling face" for "Your face", and "smiling bright" has already made Mary cringe! Your second version would misplace the stress on smi-ling.

The last line is difficult, too. To try to preserve the acrostic, it would have to begin with a word like "yet" or "you", but then it becomes hard to keep the idea "is this real"? And your two versions of this line are metrically different, so that, apart from the extra syllable, one of them certainly wouldn't fit.

Amazing how a few apparently simple words can be so hard to translate, isn't it? Having been there myself, all I can say is that you have my sympathy, but not my champagne.