LE ROMANTISME
The Captive Maid.
(la jeune captive).
Victor Hugo
If only I were free,
This land l’d love and praise Yon plaintive, murmuring Sea And yonder fields of maize
Yon stars in heaven arrayed Saw I not in the shade The spahi’s sabre-blade Reflect the outer rays ?
No Tartar maid am I.
For that an eunuch loon
My mirror hold on high
Or my guitar should tune Hence from this Sodom far
In the land whence we are Beneath the evening star
With youths we may commune.
And yet I love those plains Where never Winter’s breath Athwart the open panes
May enter cold as death
The rain is warm, serene
The wandering insect seen Among the grasses green Like emerald glittereth.
Smyrna on princess-wise Amid her towers doth show !
The happy Spring tide’s skies Above her ever glow
And on the waves that run About her in the sun
One seeth more than one Fresh archipelago.
I love these vermeil towers These standards bright and gay These golden trellised bowers Like toys for children’s play.
And when my thoughts more lax, J’4 cradle without tax,
I love upon the backs
Of elephants to sway
Within these fairy halls My heart song-sated e’er Hearkening the spirit calls That from the desert fare The genii thinks to hear Commingle for the ear The harmonies that veer .
And hover in the air,
I love the scents that stray From yonder cassolettes
The trembling jasemine spray The guilded panes that fret.
I love the source of balm Beneath the nodding palm And the storks white and calm On the white minarets.
I love on mosses wild
To croon à spanish song
Whilst my companions mild Flutter the grass along
And to the rhythmic sound Skimming the flower-strewn ground Turn in à smiling round
Beneath the leafy throng.
But o’ er all, when the light Breeze skins me with its van
I love to sit by night
With dreaming eyes to scan The sea that lies asleep, Whilst from the heavenly steep The moon, above the deep Opens her silver fan.
Spring sadness.
(Tristesse du printemps).
Victor Hugo.
The splendours of the time unstraiten not my soul Though like à girl, the plain doth laugh and sing and troll, The nests thrill in the holies high The world is everywhere with gaiety ashine; May in the grottoes green, upon the moss supine On lovers looks with smiling eye.
For me I let Spring’s balms, fleet over hill and lawn, These phantoms sweet, the flowers, let whisper and the dawn.
Say thou wilt live unhearkened; Sunken in myself alone, unheeding May in bloom, Mine eyes with visions filled of my internal gloom I dream of the delivered dead.
Yet but a little while, proud sea, some little ebb and flow And I no less shall have my tomb the grass below, Amid the greensward white and pale Under the shade of some old ivy-trellised tree Where men, « O, passer by » shall read; « this stone from thee Covers the ruins of à gaol ».
The Source.
(la RoLce) ;
Théophile Gautier.
Between two boulders in à nook Hard by the lake there wells a source Blithely it starts, as if the brook Were bent upon a distant course.
What joy ! it murmurs, as it pours It was so dark between the grass, Now all is green about my shores; The sky is mirrored in my glass.
The blue-eyed flowerets fringe my brim; « Forget-me-not » to me they say; The dragon-flies my surface skim And scratch me with their tails in play.
The birds to drink of me stoop low
Who knows? Perhaps my wandering waves May yet into a river grow
That valleys, rocks and castles laves.
Yet still I broider with my spray Bridges of stone and granite quays And bear the vessels far away Unto the all-containing seas.
So prates the rill, of future toils And future glories all à dream; Like water in à pot that boils
It may not hold its swelling stream.
But near the cradle is the tomb; The future giant dies yet small Into the lake’s engulphing womb The new-born rillets’ waters fall.
Veteran’s of the Guard.
(Vieux de la Vieille).
Théophile Gautier.
By ennui driven from my room Along the Boulevards did I stray December’s time of cold and gloom It was à rainy, windy day.
And spectres there from death’s dark flood Escaped to life again, strange sight !
Under the drizzle in the mud;
1 saw pass by in full daylight.
The thing is worth à chance regard Three gruff and grim old sons of Mars In uniforms of the Old Guard !.
And two mere phantoms of Hussars !
Tis not dead that from the mould
Are wakened by the midnight drum
Only some Old ’uns of the Old ?
To mark the Great Return that came *
Since the supreme last fight, one lean Become hath, and another stout, The coat, that fitted erst, hath been Here taken in and there let out
Brave tatters, epic frippery
Ye noble rags with cross for star In your heroic oddity, you
You fairer than King’s mantles are.
Quip them not, comrade overmuch.
Salute them rather, hat in hand, These heroes of an Iliad, such
As Homer never might have planned.
Respect their grey haïrs, on the bro w By twenty climates bronzed and tanned The scars of wounds continue now The furrow traced by age’s hand
1. La Garde impériale, dont la Vieille garde faisait partie. 2. Vieux de la Vieille (Garde). MS 3. Retour de la guerre avec l'Autriche, que termina la victoire d Austerlitz
AT
Their skins bizarrely blackened tell Of Egypt’s -burning sun- brimmed air And Russia’s snows implacable
Yet powder o’er their grizzled hair.
If their hands tremble sooth to say The Beresina’s cold’s to blame,
For that from Cairo long the way To Wilna is, ” t is that they’re lame.
If they are crippled, ‘tis that still In flag for lack of sheets they’ve lain Afield, and if their sleeves hang ill ? T'is that à ball their arm hath ta’en.
Mock we not these whom from afar The boys pursue with laughter light They were the day of which we are The evening and belike the night.
Remembering, when all else forgot Red lancer and blue grenadier
See, at the Column’s * foot the’re met As at their sole God’s altar here.
There, proud of their long sufferance And grateful for each bygone ill
And pain, they feel the heart of France Beneath their tattered clothes beat still
So on our smiles, our tears we shed To see this hero-carnival
The masquerade of empire dead Pass like the morn after à ball.
And the eagle of the Grande Armée From yonder heav’n his pinions hold Forth of his halo’s glorious ray Spreads over them his wings of gold.
