French Poem the Time Has Come to Light the Stars Again

Selected French Poems of the 19th Century

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Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2007, All Rights Reserved

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Contents

• Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
• Clair de Lune
• Since I have touched my lips…
• My Two Daughters
• Her anxiety were blank…
• Tomorrow, at Dawn
• Ave, Dea; moriturus te salutat
• June Nights
• To Théophile Gautier
• Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855)
• Gothic Song
• El Desdichado (The Disinherited)
• Myrtho
• Horus
• Delfica
• Artemis
• Gold Lines
• Alfred de Musset (1810-1857)
• Song
• Barbarina's Song
• On a Dead Lady
• Sonnet
• Théophile Gautier (1811-1872)
• Sonnet
• The Hippopotamus
• Carmen
• Art
• Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894)
• The Jaguar'south Dream
• Stéphane Mallarmé (1844-1896)
• Sigh
• O so dear
• Sonnet
• Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)
• The piano kissed…
• In the Endless
• Parsifal
• The sky's above the roof….
• A Poor Young Shepherd
• Poetic Art
• Jules Laforgue (1860-1887)
• Pierrots
• Pierrot'due south Oral communication
• Pierrot's Melancholy
• Apothesosis
• Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)
• Annie
• Rhenish Night

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Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

'Victor Hugo'
Auguste Rodin, 1884, The Rijksmuseum

Clair de Lune

The moon was serene and played on the waves –

The window still open, free to the cakewalk,

The Sultana gazes, and the body of water that heaves

Down there nighttime isles with silver laves.

The lute escapes from her vibrant fingers.

She listens…A soft sound strikes soft echoes.

A Turkish trader from Cos's waters,

Upward from the isles of Hellenic republic on Tartar oars?

Or cormorants plunging i by one, cutting

The flood, pearls flying from their wings?

Or a Djinn higher up in a thin phonation piping,

Hurling high towers in the sea equally he spins?

Who stirs the waves by the women'south seraglio?

Non the cormorant, cradled there on the body of water,

Non stones from the walls, or the rhythmic trounce

Of a trader's oars thrashing the waves beneath.

Simply heaving sacks, from which sobs suspension free.

See them, sounding the inundation that floats them on,

Moving their sides similar man forms…

The moon was serene and played on the sea.

Since I have touched my lips…

Since I have touched my lips to your brimming cup,

Since I take bowed my pale brow in your easily,

Since I accept former breathed the sweetness breath

Of your soul, a perfume buried in shadow lands;

Since it was granted to me to hear you utter

Words in which the mysterious centre sighs,

Since I have seen smiles, since I accept seen tears

Your mouth on my oral fissure, your optics on my eyes;

Since I have seen over my enraptured caput

A light from your star shine, ah, ever veiled!

Since I have seen falling to my life'south flood

The leafage of a rose snatched from out your days,

At present at last I can say to the fleeting years:

– Pass by! Pass by, forever! No more age!

Away with you and all your withered flowers,

I have a blossom in my soul no one tin can take!

Your wings, brushing information technology, spill never a drop

From the drinking glass I make full, from which my thirst I quench.

My soul possesses more fire than you have ashes!

My centre more love than your forgetfulness!

My Two Daughters

In pleasant evening'south fresh-clear darkness,

One seems a swan, the other a pigeon,

Both joyous, both lovely, O sweetness!

Run across, the elder and younger move

At the garden's border, and beside them

White carnations with long frail stems,

Stirred by the air current, in a marble urn,

Lean, watching them, alive and motionless,

And, trembling with shade there, seem to be

Butterflies caught in flying, frozen ecstasy.

Her anxiety were blank…

Her feet were blank she'd undone her pilus,

Sitting, fair, by the bowing reeds;

I who went by, thought a fairy was there,

And I said: Volition you walk in the meads?

She looked at me with a haughty look

That dazzler retains when nosotros conquer,

And I said: Will you? It's the month of love,

Volition a walk in the woods exist your reply?

She dried her feet on the riverside grass;

She looked at me in one case again,

And the playful beauty so took thought.

Oh the birds that sang deep in the 24-hour interval!

The water caressed the shore so gently!

That joyous sweet girl, fearful and wild,

Among the green rushes she came to me,

Her hair in her eyes, and through it a smile.

Tomorrow, at Dawn

Tomorrow, at dawn, when the fields whiten

I'll set up out. I know you are waiting for me.

I'll travel the forest; I'll travel the mountain,

I can't stay abroad any longer, you see.

I'll stride out with only my thought in sight,

Seeing nothing beyond, without hearing a audio,

Lone and unknown, dorsum bowed, folded hands,

Sad, since daylight to me volition seem night.

I'll not witness evening's aureate cascade,

Nor the distant sails sinking down to Harfleur,

And when I arrive, I shall place on your grave,

A sprig of dark-green holly, and heather in flower.

Ave, Dea; moriturus te salutat

(Hail, Goddess; he who is about to die salutes you)

To Judith Gautier

Death and beauty are two things profound,

So of dark and azure, that 1 might say that

They were two sisters terrible and fecund

Possessing the i enigma, the i secret.

O women, voices, gazes, black hair, blonde tresses,

Bonfire out, I die! Own to lite, love, attraction,

O pearls the sea mingles with its great masses,

O gleaming birds of the forest'due south sombre ocean!

Judith, our fates are closer to i some other's

Than one might think, seeing my face and yours:

The whole divine abyss is present in your eyes,

And I experience the starry gulf within my soul;

We are both neighbours of the silent skies.

Madame, since you're beautiful, and I'thousand old.

June Nights

In summer, when 24-hour interval has fled, when covered with flowers

The distant plain sheds sweet intoxication;

Eyes closed, and ears half-open to muted hours,

We prevarication only half-asleep in transparent sleep.

The stars seem purer the shade is more delightful;

A hazy one-half-lite colours the dome on loftier;

And dawn, stake and tender, awaiting her moment,

Seems to wander about all night in the deeps of the sky.

To Théophile Gautier

Friend, poet spirit, you accept fled our nighttime,

You lot left our noise, to penetrate the light;

Now your name will smooth on pure summits.

I who knew yous young and beautiful, I

Who loved you, I who in our groovy flights,

Distraught, took condolement from your loyal spirit.

I, white with the years that snow downwards on my head,

Remembering times past, I dream, instead,

Of those young days that saw our dawn,

The struggle, the loud loonshit, the storm,

The new art offered to the mob's screaming,

And hear, aye, that vast sublime smash fading.

Son of ancient Greece and the new French republic,

Fierce your respect for the dead, full of hope;

Y'all never close your optics to the future.

Theban mage, druid by the dark menhir,

Flamen by Tiber, Brahmin by the Ganges,

Plumbing fixtures angelic arrow to godlike bow,

Viewing the haunts of Roland, Achilles,

Powerful mysterious smith, you'd know

How to twine lord's day-rays to a unmarried flame;

In your soul the sunset met the twenty-four hour period;

Yesterday tomorrow in your fertile encephalon;

Y'all crowned the onetime art father of the new;

Yous understood that when an unknown soul

Speaks to a nation, lightning in the clouds,

We must open up our hearts, accept, honey aloud;

Calm you scorned the vile attempts of those

Who dribbled Shakespeare, drooled Aeschylus;

Yous knew this age had its own air to breathe,

That art progresses by cocky-transformation,

Dazzler's adorned by melding with greatness.

And you were heard to utter cries of joy,

When Drama gripped Paris in its teeth,

When leap chased aboriginal winter away,

When the wondrous star of new ideals,

All of a sudden glittered in the burning heaven,

And the Hippogriff stole Pegasus' identify.

On the tomb's severe sill I greet y'all,

You knew the beautiful, go discover the truthful.

Climb the harsh stair. From the black steps' height,

The arches of the nighttime bridge loom in sight;

Go! Die! The final step's the final hour.

Fly, Eagle, see the gulfs that you desired;

You'll view the absolute, real, sublime.

You'll feel the ominous wind on high

Know the vertigo of eternal wonder.

From heaven's peak you'll meet your Olympus,

From truth's alpine height Man's unreality,

Even Job's, and Homer's, and you'll view,

Soul, from God's pinnacle, Jehovah too.

Spirit, soar! Hover higher on open wings!

When the living leave us, moved, I gaze,

For to enter decease, is entering the temple;

And when a homo dies, and goes his way,

I see my own ascent, articulate, like crystal.

Friend, I feel fate's dark plenitude;

I accept begun my death with confinement,

I see my own deep vaguely starlit night.

This is the hour when I as well accept flying.

My long thread trembles almost at the pocketknife;

The breeze, that takes yous, lifts me up alive,

And I'll follow those I loved, I the exile.

Their gaze draws me into infinite space.

I hasten at that place. Don't close the sombre gate.

Pass on; for it'due south the law; none tin can deny;

All leans; and this great historic period with all its light

Slides to the vast shadow where, pale, we flee.

Oh! The oaks they vicious for Hercules' pyre,

What a harsh roar they brand this night of fire!

Expiry's steeds neigh joyfully: the bright day flies;

Our great century that tamed the hostile winds

Expires….their blood brother and their peer, O Gautier,

You join Dumas, Lamartine, Musset.

The ancient sea that made men young is dry out,

Youth has no fountain, at present in that location's no more Styx,

And the grim reaper with his pointed scythe

Steps forward, thoughtfully, to articulate the field;

My turn arrives; night fills my troubled eye,

That from doves' flights, alas, reads coming days,

Weeps over cradles, smiles to see new graves.

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Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855)

'Gérard de Nerval'
Frontispice pour Grandes Figures d'Hier et d'Aujourd'hui, 1852 - 1883
The New York Public Library: Digital Collections

Gothic Vocal

Beautiful spouse

I dear your tears!

They're the dew

Befitting flowers.

Cute things

Accept but i spring

With roses let's sow

Time's footprints!

Blonde or brunette

Must we select?

Pleasure is

The god of this world.

El Desdichado (The Disinherited)

I am the darkness – the widower – the un-consoled,

The prince of Aquitaine in the ruined tower;

My sole star is dead – and my constellated lute

Bears the black sun of Melancholy.

You lot who consoled me in funereal night,

Bring me Posilipo, the sea of Italian republic,

The blossom that pleased my grieving heart,

And the trellis where the vine entwines the rose.

Am I Phoebus or Love?...Biron or Lusignan?

My brow's however red from the queen's kiss;

I dreamed in the grotto where Sirens swim…

And twice victorious crossed Acheron:

Plucking from Orpheus' lyre one by one

The saintly sighs and the faerie cries.

Annotation: The Spanish title was the motto adopted by the disinherited Ivanhoe in Scott'south novel. The Hill of Posilipo is situated to the due west of the metropolis of Naples, and is the site of Virgil'southward tomb. Biron was a friend of Henri IV, Lusignan a famous family unit, both associated with the Valois. A number of personal references are best pursued by reading a biography of Nerval, of his early meeting with 'Adrienne' and after relationship with the extra Jenny Colon.

Myrtho

Myrtho, I think of you divine enchantress,

And of proud Posilipo, lit with a grand fires,

Of your brow flooded with Eastern light,

And the black grapes twined in your golden hair.

Information technology was in your cup I drank intoxication,

When they saw me praying at Iacchus' feet,

And from your laughing optics' undercover lightening,

For the Muses fabricated me one of the sons of Hellenic republic.

I know why the volcano erupts once more…

You stirred information technology with active foot, simply yesterday,

And all of a sudden ash drowned the horizon'south circumvolve.

Since a Norman knuckles broke your gods of clay,

Eternally, below Virgil'due south laurel spray,

The pale hydrangea is wed to the greenish myrtle.

Annotation: Myrtho a shining mask of Venus Murcia to whom myrtle was sacred, is the counterpart to the dark prince of El Desdichado. Alchemically she is De Nerval'due south feminine principle to be fused with the masculine. Iacchus was an epithet of the god Dionysus (Bacchus) and the proper noun of the torch-bearer at the Eleusinian mysteries, herald of the child built-in of the underworld.

Horus

Trembling Kneph, the god, shook the starry ways:

Isis, the mother, then raised herself from her bed,

Made, to her savage spouse, a sign of hatred,

In her green eyes shone the passion of elder days.

'Exercise you come across him, she cried, the old lecher dies;

Through his mouth the frosts of earth take flight;

Bind his lame feet, destroy his squinting sight,

He's the god of craters, king of the wintertime's water ice!

The new spirit summons, the eagle is done,

Cybele'southward robe for him do I at present put on…

The beloved son of Hermes and Osiris!'

The goddess fled away on her golden shell,

Her adored image returning to us on the not bad,

And the sky shone beneath the scarf of Iris.

Note: This poem is a consequence of the two previous poems. Kneph, is Amon-Ra the not bad god of Egypt. Isis was the Egyptian female parent goddess (Cybele was her equivalent in Asia Minor): consort of Osiris she diameter the child Horus-Harpocrates, the new sunday (De Nerval's prototype here for the Christ-Child). This is the alchemical fusion of male and female principles which produces gilt, a process sacred to Hermes Trismegistos. Iris' scarf is the rainbow, she existence sky-messenger for Hera (the Greek smashing-goddess). Isis returns as Venus from the waves but fused with Mary, the Stella Maris.

Delfica

Do you know it, Daphne, that ballad of old,

At the sycamore-foot, or below the white laurels,

Under myrtle or olive or trembling willows,

That song of dearest that resounds forever?...

Exercise you know it, the Temple with vast peristyle,

And the lemons, bitter, marked by your teeth,

And the grotto fatal to imprudent guests,

Where the vanquished dragon's ancient seed sleeps?...

Those gods yous endlessly weep volition return!

Time bring back the order of classic days;

World has shuddered with prophetic breath…

Yet the sibyl with Latinate face still sleeps

Under the arch of Constantine

- And the austere portico nada disturbs.

Annotation: There are references to a visit to the Temple of Isis at Pompeii with an English daughter, Octavia (who tasted a lemon), and to the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli. Constantine's Curvation is in Rome. Condensed mythological references abound.

Artemis

The thirteenth returns…She's forever the get-go;

And ever the sole one – or the sole instant;

For are you queen, O you lot, the first or the concluding?

Are you king, yous the sole or the last lover?...

Dear him who loved you from cradle to bier;

She I solitary loved still loves me tenderly:

She is death – or the dead one…O joy! O torment!

The rose she holds is the Rose trémiere.

Neapolitan saint with your hands full of fire,

Rose with violet heart, Saint Gudula's bloom:

Take you constitute your cantankerous in the desert of heaven?

White roses: fall! You insult our gods,

Autumn, white wraiths, from your called-for skies:

- She, saint of the abyss, holier to my eyes!

Notation: The Rose trémiere is the hollyhock. St Gudula was a Brabant saint (tardily 7th-early on eighth century), patroness of Brussels. A demon wishing to interrupt her prayers extinguished the light she carried, only divine ability rekindled information technology. The flower-similar mucus once called 'tremella deliquescens' (Dacrymyces deliquescens), is known as 'Sinte Goulds lampken' (St. Gudula's lantern).

Golden Lines

Well, then! All is sentient!

Pythagoras

Gratuitous-thinker, Man, do y'all recall yous solitary

Think, while life explodes everywhere?

Your liberty employs the powers you own,

Only world is absent-minded from all your diplomacy.

Respect an active spirit in the creature:

Each flower is a soul open up to Nature;

In metallic a mystery of dear is sleeping;

'All is sentient!' Has ability over your being.

Fear the gaze in the blind wall that watches:

There is a verb attached to thing itself…

Exercise non let it serve some impious purpose!

Oftentimes a subconscious god inhabits obscure being;

And similar an eye, born, covered by its eyelids,

Pure spirit grows below the surface of stones!

---

Alfred de Musset (1810-1857)

'Alfred de Musset'
Four men in the life of George Sand. Jules Sandeau. Chopin. Prosper Mérimée. Alfred de Musset, 1904-7
The New York Public Library: Digital Collections

Song

I said to my centre, my feeble centre:

It's enough surely to love one's mistress?

And don't you lot encounter that changeableness,

Is to lose fourth dimension's joy in centre's yearning?

My heart replied: It's never enough,

It's never plenty to dearest 1's mistress;

And don't you run across that changeableness

Makes past delights dearer and sweeter?

I said to my middle, my feeble heart;

Haven't nosotros had plenty of sadness?

And don't you see that changeableness

Is to observe new grief with every footstep?

My heart replied: It'due south never enough

We'll never have had plenty of sadness:

And don't you see that changeableness

Makes by pain dearer to united states, and sweeter?

Barbarina's Song

Going to the wars, Knight, and then off-white

What will you in that location

So far from dwelling?

Don't you encounter that nighttime is deep,

The world brings care

To those who roam?

You who believe love left behind

Flees the mind,

Alas, alas!

Seekers of fame, your living name,

Your smoke and flame

Will swiftly laissez passer.

Going to the wars, Knight, so fair,

What will yous at that place,

So far from domicile?

For this I'll weep, who was beguiled

And told my smile

Was sweeter and then.

On a Dead Lady

She was cute, if Night

Who sleeps in the darkened chapel

Where Michelangelo made calorie-free,

Unmoving, tin exist beautiful.

She was good, if it suffice

For hand to open, give in passing,

Without God seeing anything,

If coins are alms: every bit cold equally water ice.

She thought, if the empty racket

Of a sweet harmonious vocalism

Similar a murmuring stream, untaught,

Could make one believe in idea.

She prayed, if two lovely eyes,

Now fixed on earth

At present on the skies

Tin can claim a prayer's nativity.

She would have smiled, if the flower

That never bloomed, to please,

Could open to the coolest hour

Of passing and forgetful breeze.

She might have wept if that hand

Coldly placed against her heart,

Had e'er felt dew's heavenly wand

Touch on homo dirt with subtle art.

She might have loved, if pride

Like the light that uselessly

Is lit abreast the one who died,

Lit not her center's sterility.

She is dead who never lived,

She who made pretence of being:

From her hands the book has slipped

In which her optics read nix.

Sonnet

To see each other truly, to love each other simply,

Without cant, diversion, without shame or lies,

With no desire eluding united states, never remorsefully,

To alive as one, give the eye to every moment's flight;

To respect all idea as deeply as i plunges in,

To make of dear the low-cal of mean solar day and non a dream,

And in that clarity breathe freely forever –

So Laure sighed and sang to her lover.

You whose every pace touches grace supreme,

Information technology's you lot, amongst the flowers who seem carefree:

That is how ane should dearest, you lot said to me.

And it is I, old child of uncertainty and blasphemy,

Who listening, and thinking, brand you this reply:

Yes, it's thus i loves, though i lives otherwise.

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Théophile Gautier (1811-1872)

'Théophile Gautier'
Félix Henri Bracquemond, 1833 - 1914, The New York Public Library: Digital Collections

Sonnet

To vein her brow's pallor, fragile,

Nihon has granted its clearest blue;

The white porcelain is of white less true

Than her lucent cervix, her temples of agate;

In her moist eye gleams a gentle low-cal;

The nightingale'south voice is harsher yet,

And, when she rises in our dark dark,

We praise the moon in a cloudy dress;

Her silvery optics, burnished, move fluidly;

Caprice has pointed her pert little nose;

Her rima oris has the red of raspberry, peach;

Her movements flow with a Chinese menstruation,

And beside her ane breathes from her dazzler

Something sweet, like the fragrance of tea.

The Hippopotamus

The big-bellied hippopotamus

Inhabits the jungles of Java,

Where in the depths of each lair, cuss

More monsters than haunt the dreamer.

The boa uncoils and hisses,

The tiger gives out its roars,

The angry buffalo whistles;

He grazes at peace or snores.

He fears nor kris nor assegai,

He gazes at human being, with no cares at all,

And smiles at the sepoy'due south musket-ball,

That merely rebounds from his hibernate.

I'1000 like the hippopotamus;

Clothed with my convictions' weight,

Strong armour none can penetrate,

I tread, secure, the wilderness.

Carmen

Carmen is lean – a trace of yellow

Shadows her gipsy center.

Her hair is a sinister black,

Her skin, tanned by the devil.

Women claim she'due south ugly,

But for her the men go mad:

The Archbishop of Toledo

Kneels at her feet to say Mass;

For above her bister nape

Is coiled a large chignon

That, in her room, undone

Yields her torso a greatcoat.

And gleams, through the pallor,

A mouth with a acquisition smile;

Scarlet chilli, a scarlet bloom,

Hearts'-blood gives it fire.

Then formed, the swarthy one

Outdoes nobler beauty,

And with her eyes that burn

Revives satiety.

She has, in her hot ugliness,

A salt-grain of that sea

From whose biting gulf acrid Venus

Rose naked, provocatively.

Art

Yes, finer work emerges

From form that resists,

Our urges,

Marble, poetry, onyx.

Non falsely to constrain!

But to walk direct, Muse,

Maintain,

Tight-plumbing equipment tragic shoes.

Shame on the idle rhythm,

A size or more than too large,

All don

Sliding it off and on!

Sculptor, forever shun

Clay moulded in that location

By the thumb

When the mind'south elsewhere;

Wrestle with Carrara,

With Parian marble rare

And hard,

Go along the outline clear;

From Syracuse borrow

Bronze which the proud

Furrow

Has charmingly endowed;

With a frail hand,

The vein of agate, follow

Command

The profile of Apollo.

Ready the h2o-color,

Too frail tints that run,

Painter

In enameller'due south oven;

Brand Sirens blue

Tails writhing free

For you,

Monsters of heraldry;

And with triple halo

The Virgin and her Jesus

the globe

With the Cantankerous above.

All dies. – But robust

Fine art shares eternity:

The bosom

Shall outlive the city;

And the ascetic medal

Found past a labourer

Recall

From world, an Emperor.

Even the gods pass.

Simply stronger again

Than brass

Sovereign lines remain.

Chisel, file, and ream

That you lot may lock

Vague dream

In the resistant cake!

---

Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894)

'Leconte de Lisle'
Library of the World's best Literature, Ancient and Mod (p579, 1896) Internet Book Archive Images

The Jaguar's Dream

Below the dark mahoganies, creepers in flower

Hang in the heavy, motionless, fly-filled air,

Twining among the tree-stumps, falling where,

They cradle the brilliant parrot, the quarreller,

The wild monkeys, spiders with xanthous pilus.

There the wearied, ominous horse-killer,

The ox-slayer, returns with a steady tread,

Over the dead mossy trunks of old timber.

Stretching, arching his muscular loins, a breath

From his gaping cage heavy with thirst

Issues with a sudden shock, quick and harsh,

And great lizards warm from the apex rut stir,

Then vanish gleaming through the tawny grass.

Veiled from the sun in a hollow of the forest,

He sinks down; stretched out on a level stone,

Cleans his paw with a broad lick of his tongue

Blinks aureate optics dull with sleepiness;

And, as his inert forces, in imagination

Make his tail flicker and his flanks quiver,

Dreams himself deep in some dark-green plantation,

Leaping, and plunging dripping claws forever

Into bullocks' flesh as they bellow and shiver.

---

Stéphane Mallarmé (1844-1896)

'Stéphane Mallarmé'
Paul Gauguin, 1891, The Rijksmuseum

Sigh

My soul towards your forehead, where, O at-home sister,

An autumn dreams blotched by scarlet smudges,

And towards the errant sky of your angelic eye

Climbs: as in a melancholy garden the truthful sigh

Of a white jet of h2o towards the Azure!

– To the Azure that October stirred, pale, pure,

That in the vast pools mirrors space languor,

And over dead water where the leaves wander

The wind, in russet throes dig their cold furrow,

Allows a long ray of yellow light to menstruum.

O so dear

O so honey from far and near and white all

So deliciously you, Méry, that I dream

Of what impossibly flows, of some rare balm

Over some flower-vase of darkened crystal.

Do you know it, yes! For me, for years, hither,

Forever, your dazzling smile prolongs

The one rose with its perfect summer gone

Into times by, yet so on into the future.

My center that sometimes at night tries to know itself,

Or with which last word to name you the most tender

Exults in that which just whispered sis

Were information technology not, such brusk tresses so peachy a treasure,

That yous teach me quite some other sweetness,

Soft through the kiss murmured but in your hair.

Note: Dated 1895. The French text reads 'Mary', this existence one of a series of poems written for Méry Laurent, a friend also of Manet and others.

Sonnet

(Méry, sans trop d'aurore…)

Méry,

Without dawn likewise grossly now inflaming

The rose, that splendid, natural and weary

Sheds fifty-fifty her heavy veil of perfumes to hear

Underneath the flesh the diamond weeping,

Yep, without those dewy crises! And gently,

Unbroken when the sky fills with storm,

Jealous to add who knows what spaces

To simple day the day and so true in feeling,

Does it non seem, Méry, that each twelvemonth,

Where spontaneous grace relights your brow,

Suffices, given and then much wonder and for me,

Similar a lone fan with which a room'due south surprised,

To refresh with as little pain as is needed hither

All our inborn and unvarying friendship.

---

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

'Paul Verlaine'
Library of the World's all-time Literature, Ancient and Modern (p248, 1896) Internet Book Archive Images

The pianoforte kissed…

Joyous notes, a sounding harpsichord's intrusion.

Pétrus Borel

The piano kissed by a frail paw

Gleams distantly in rose-gray evening

While with a wingtips' weightless sound

A fine old tune, so fragile, charming

Roams discreetly, virtually trembling,

Through the chamber She's long perfumed.

What is this sudden cradle vocal

That gradually lulls my poor beingness?

What do you want of me, playful one?

What exercise you wish, slight vague refrain

Drifting at present, dying, towards the window

Opening a footling on a patch of garden?

In the Endless

In the countless ennui

Of this empty land,

The blurred snowfall

Gleams similar sand.

The sky is of copper

Without true lite

Every bit if the moon there

Had lived and died.

The grey crowns

Of nearby trees

Float like clouds

On the misty breeze.

The sky is of copper

Without true lite

As if the moon there

Had lived and died.

Wheezing crow

And you lot, lean wolves,

In these sharp gusts

What will yous practise?

In the endless ennui

Of this empty land,

The blurred snow

Gleams like sand.

Parsifal

Parsifal has conquered the girls, their sugariness

Chatter, amusing lust – and his inclination,

A virgin boy'southward, towards the Flesh, tempted

To dear the little tits and gentle blubbering;

He's conquered lovely Woman, of subtle

Centre, showing her absurd arms, provoking breast;

He's conquered Hell, returned to his tent,

With a weighty bays on his adolescent arm.

With the lance that pierced the sacred Side!

He's cured the king, hither he'due south male monarch, abides,

And priest of the quintessential holy Treasure.

Worships in golden robes, a symbol, glory's home,

Vessel where the truthful Claret shines, the pure,

– And, O those children's voices singing in the dome!

Note: The last line is quoted past Eliot, in French, in The Wasteland (with reference to the Fisher Male monarch) as is the second line of De Nerval's El Desdichado.

The sky's above the roof….

The heaven'south above the roof

So blueish, so calm!

A tree above the roof

Waves its palm.

The bell in the heaven you meet

Gently rings.

A bird on the tree you see

Sadly sings.

My God, my God, life's there,

Unproblematic and sweet.

A peaceful rumbling there,

The town's at our anxiety.

- What take yous washed, O you lot at that place

Who incessantly cry,

Say: what have you lot done, there

With youth gone by?

A Poor Young Shepherd

I'one thousand afraid of a buss

Like the kiss of a bee.

I suffer like this

And wake endlessly.

I'm afraid of a kiss!

Yet I love Kate

And her sweetness gaze.

She's frail

With a long pale face.

Oh! How I dear Kate!

Information technology'south Saint Valentine's Day!

I must, I don't dare

Tomorrow, they say…

It's a dreadful affair

Is Saint Valentine'southward 24-hour interval!

She's promised to me,

Fortuitously!

But the difficulty

For a lover, poor he,

With his darling to exist!

Poetic Art

For Charles Morice

Music above everything,

The Imbalanced preferred

Vaguer more soluble in air

Cypher weighty, stock-still therein.

And don't go choosing your words

Without some defoliation of vision:

Nil's dearer than shadowy verse

Where precision weds indecision.

It's beautiful eyes hidden by veils,

Information technology's broad day quivering at noon,

It's the blue disorder of clear stars

In an autumn, cool, with no moon!

For we e'er want Dash,

Not Colour, dash evermore!

Oh, nuance solitary can midweek

Dream with dream, and flute to horn!

From murderous Epigrams flee,

Cruel Wit and Laughter impure

That brings tears to the high Azure,

And all that base garlic cuisine!

Take eloquence, wring its neck!

You'd do well, while y'all're in menstruation,

To make Rhyme a fraction wiser.

If nosotros don't scout out, where volition it get?

Oh who'll tell of the wrongs of Rhyme?

What mad Negro, or tone-deaf child,

Created this penny jewel, this criminal offense,

That rings hollow, false nether the file?

Music over again and forever!

Let your line be a thing so lite,

It feels similar a soul that soars in flying

To new skies and fresh lovers.

Let your line be the finest adventure

Afloat on the tense dawn wind

That goes wakening thyme and mint…

All the rest – is literature.

---

Jules Laforgue (1860-1887)

'Jules Laforgue'
1885, Wikimedia Commons

Pierrots

Emerges, on a taut cervix,

From a starched ruff idem

A beardless face up, cold-creamed,

A beanpole: hydrocephalic.

The optics are drowned in opium

In universal licence

The clownish mouth bugged

A singular geranium.

A mouth, at present bottomless pit

Glacially screeching laughter,

Now a transcendental opening,

Vain smile of La Gioconda.

Planting their floury cones

On a black silk cut-throat'due south scarf,

They'll brand their crow'due south-feet laugh

And wrinkle their trefoil noses.

For jewel-stoned rings, on mitt,

They've Egyptian scarabs,

In well-cutting buttonholes,

Dandelions from the wasteland.

They go, eating the azure,

Sometimes vegetables too,

Difficult-boiled eggs, and mandarins,

And rice every bit white as their costume.

They're of the Pallid sect,

They've nothing to do with God at all.

And whistle: All'due south for the all-time

In this best of Carnivals!'

Pierrot's Speech

A lunar reveller simply

Making circles in ponds,

I've no designs beyond

Condign legendary.

Gathering up with defiance

My pale-mandarin'due south sleeves

I puff out my oral fissure – and breathe

Gentle Christian advice.

Ah, yep, to become legendary, also,

On the brink of a charlatan age!

But where are terminal yr's Moons?

And why can't God be re-made?

Pierrot's Melancholy

On the first solar day, I beverage their bored eyes complete…

And I would buss their feet

To death. Oh, if they'd condescend

To take my heart, blood-stained!

Then we talk… – information technology becomes Tenderness,

And finally I offer them friendliness.

Out of tenderness, I offering myself, equally blood brother, guide;

They believe I'chiliad shy,

Wink a soft centre of class:

'One word and I'm yours!'

(I believe information technology.) And so the wrinkles I limited,

Of the middle, grin into emptiness…

And suddenly I give up the garrison,

Feigning treason!

(A narrow escape!)

At to the lowest degree, she'll write?

No, and I mourn her all that season…

– Oh! I've schemes beyond reason!

Who'll tame my heart! Sweet cure…

I'm true past nature!

Gentle every bit a nun!

Come! I'm no Don Juan,

Would it exist such a wild adventure

Under the sun? Midst all this verdure…

Apothesosis

In every sense, forever, Silence swarms

With knots of gilt stars mixed swirling.

They speak of gardens sanded with diamonds,

But each one's solitary, sadly, sparkling.

At present, downwards here, in this unknown angle,

A glimmering furrow of melancholy cherry-red,

A sweetly twinkling dominicus-spark trembles:

A patriarchal guide leads his family unit.

His family unit: a mass of dense coloured globes.

And on 1, that'south Globe, a xanthous dot, Paris,

Where hangs, a light, a poor ageing fool:

In the delicate universal club, unique phenomenon.

He's the mirror of a day, and knows information technology.

He dreams a while so makes a sonnet.

---

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)

'Guillaume Apollinaire'
Guillaume Apollinaire - Wybór Poezji", Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, Biblioteka Narodowa, 1975, Wikimedia Commons

Annie

On the coast of Texas

Twixt Mobile and Galveston at that place was a

Neat garden full of roses

That besides contained a villa

Similar a behemothic rose.

A woman oftentimes walked

In the garden all lonely

And when I passed along the linden-bordered road

We virtually talked.

As she was a Mennonite

Her rose-trees and her clothes lacked buttons

2 were missing from my glaze-forepart

Both of us followed about the aforementioned rite.

Rhenish Night

My glass is total of wine trembling like a flame

Heed to the boatman's languid sound

He sings of having seen seven women 'neath the moon

Twining their long green hair along the footing

Stand up and sing aloud and dance a circular

And then I'll no longer hear the boatman singing

And seat abreast me all the pretty blondes

The ones with neat plaits and tranquility-looking

The Rhine the Rhine is drunkard where vineyards gleam

All the golden of dark falls there reflected in the stream

The vocalization sings on forever a decease-rattle

Of the green haired faeries chanting summertime's dream

My drinking glass similar a burst of laughter shatters

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Source: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/French/SelectedFrenchPoemsoftheNineteenthCentury.php

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