SE À LE
Popularity (la Popularité)
Auguste Barbier
Yes, popularity’s the brazen, shameless whore, That holds the world all in her arms,
That with breast to the sun open as the nymph of yore, Yields to who will her venal charms.
Nay rather’ tis the sea at first calm and serene By new day lighted from above
The sea that smiles and sings, as’ twere à youthful queen The ocean blond and full of love;
The Sea kissing its sands and scenting East and West With its intoxicating trace
Rocking upon its broad and undulating breast Its sunburnt, sailor populace;
Then the Sea furious waxed, that, from its silent bed In madness starling up doth rise
And grown to giant height, with its enormous head And whirling billows threats the skies;
Then rushing to and fro, dishevelled, eddying Under the lightening and the rain,
As’ twere an hundred bulls at battle, bellowing It boundeth in its briny plain;
Then white with foam and wrath, upon the sandy beach With grinning mouth and foaming eye
It rolls and rends the earth and rocks within its reach Groaning as one about to die.
At last Bacchante-like, whenas it can no more Tired out with rage, the surging flood
Sinks back into its bed, and rests upon the shore À shower of human heads and blood,
io
Sonnet.
Gérard de Nerval.
Free-thinking man, that deemst thyself the thinker sole In this one world, where life flames forth of everything, The forces that thou hold’st thy freewill doth control But the universe thou call’st in nought to counselling
Respect thou in the brute a live and active soul Each flower à spirit is to nature opening;
A mystery of love in metals lies; the whole
World feels and all things part have in thy fashioning,
Fear, in the dumb, blind walls, an eye that watéheth thee. In very matters self, à word divine there hides ; To impious uses let it not converted be
Oft in obscure things à secret God àbides ; And as beneath the lids there sleep the unborn eyes So in the rock inert à slumbering spirit lies.
Elevation.
(l’Elévation)
Charles Baudelaire.
Above the fields and vales, above the rills and meres. Above the mountain tops, the woods, thé clouds, the seas, Beyond the splendid sun, beyond the boundaries
Of the etherial plains and of the starry spheres.
Thou flittest soul of mine, with pinions frank and free And like à swimmer skilled that revels in the main, Thou furrowest joyously th’ illimitable inane,
With an ineffable and male felicity. |
Uplift thyself afar, o’ er these miasmas base;
Go purify thyself in that supernal air,
And drink, as it à pure celestial liquor were,
The fluid fire that fills the limpid plains of space.
Forth of the vast chagrins, the sorrow and despite That this our clouded life o’ erburden evermore, Thrice happy those who can with vigorous pinions, soar Up to the fields serene of pure and limpid light.
Whose heaven aspiring thoughts, lark-like with unclogged wings At break of morning take their flight toward the skies
That hover over life and effortless comprize
The language of the flowers and 6f the silent things !
The Nightingale.
(le Rossignol) Théodore de Banville.
See on the violet tops
Pearls of the Summer eves Glitter the dew’s first drops; Hark in the thickset leaves Yet with her flight a-swale Carols the Nightingale.
The moon rides high and free; The sea afar that throbs,
The mild melodious sea,
Heaves long and lingering s0bs “Of passion and affright
A8 I do in thy sight.
As thou art, half arrayed Bide at the window-sill, My tender, artless maid Dost thou remember still What thou to me didst say In Paradise one day ?
Nay, speak not, At thy knee Thus seated let me view
Thy lips that sigh for me Thy black-browed eyes of blue ? Twas yesterday, Thy hair Fain would I loose, my fair.
O fleece, O glad array
Of tresses that I love !
Thou art not faithless ! Nay, My golden plumaged dove, My angel found again
’Twas but à dream insane.
The Elephants. |
(les Eléphants).
Leconte de Lisle.
The tawny sands are like a sea immeasurable
That flameth in its bed supine, low-sunken still;
An undulating wave, fall’ n motionless, doth fill
Th’ horizon, copper-hued with smoke whereas men dwell
No life there is; no noiïse; the lions all full fed.
Sleep in their darkling lairs, an hundred miles away
And yonder neath the palms, where else the panthers prey Beside the well-springs blue, giraffes drink unadread.
So the plain flames, beneath the heaven’s brazen glare. But, whilst all else there sleeps in that stern solitude The rugged elephants, slow travellers and rude
Towned their native land, across the deserts fare.
He who the vanguard leads an old chief is :his hide
Is fissured like à log, that ages undermine ;
His head is as à rock; the column of his spine
Grows arched above his back portentous at each stride
Unslackening evermore nor hastening in his pace Unto the certain goal he guides his dusky band, As hollowing à road behind them in the sand.
The pilgrims huge ensue his patriarchal trace.
Ears standing out like fans and trunks their teeth between They fare with half-shut eyes, their bellies pant and smoke
Their sweat as ” twere a mist, mounts in the sheer sun-stroke And round them buzz and hum, a thousand insects keen.
In dreams they see again the mighty stream that speeds Down from the Mountains vast, where swims the river horse, And casting neath themoon, large shadows in their course, Down to the drinking place go crashing through the reeds.
So in à sable line, courageous, full of cheer Unslackening, if slow, they trudge the sandy sea, And the great waste resumes its immobility As on the sky-line dim, the huge beasts disappear.
The Aboma.
Leconte de Lisle.
At foot of yon blue hills, beneath the canopy
Of heav’n clear-spread above the lakes, and plains and woods, The mighty river, swoln with hundred lesser floods,
Itself towards the East betaketh and the sea.
The fluid gold of day, jets out in sheaves of light
Soars, flowers and falls again, in many à glittering stream Which like a rose of fire, on the flood show’ring, seem Beyond its proper shores to swell it for the sight
LLMOD EE
Under the Mangrove aisles, with long and viscous sprays In the entangled web of the fat water weed,
Eddy in whirling swarms, mosquitoes full of greed
And flies whose flitting wings the river’s surface graze.
The purple Ara wakes the reptiles : in affright
Startled by his harsh cries, coral and rattle-snake
The hummingbird’s frail nests upon the branches shake With the commotion of their undulating flight.
O’er the vast pasture-lands, upon the far skyline, : Wheras the brume floats up in flakes from vale and lawn Pass, driven to and fro by th’ arrows of the dawn Squadrons of stallions wild and herds of wandering kine.
These at full speed, proud eyed and glad, by thousands roam, With nostrils to the wind of that auroral hour
And mane and tail outstretched, their native deserts scour : These go with muzzles laid to ground, and bossed with foam.
The Alligators neath the sloping bank attent,
Wait, beaving with their backs the black mud of the brink The Jaguar, that comes down to the flood to drink And-that athwart the air, sniffs at their musky scent.
But on the mossy air, with dew besprinkled, see, By the vague rumours now awakened from his sleep, Stirs, heaving up his coils in the full sun to éteep The ancient Python-King, th’ Aboma Caribbee.
His steely muscles move and work from side to side As they his massy neck upheave and sealy head; His tails’ long spirals scourge the river-bed;
He rises to the height of his imperial pride.
With emerald helmed and maïled in topaz panoply Like to an idol old upon his coils upright,
There dreaming he abides, all bathed in morning light, Disdainful and superb, with glazed and wandering eye.
Then when on every side the heaven’s ardours steep The torrid water flakes, and earth with middle day He plunges in and goes to seek his wonted prey, Panther or bull or man, far in the forest’; deep.
Hymn to England.
(Hymne à l’Angleterre) (Les Derniers Jours). Maurice Bouchor.
O Thou, whom Paris cockneys name Perfidious Albion, I fain
Would burn à candle to thy flame ‘ And holy water on thee rain.
Country of colours vertiginous
And tragic dramatists, where side By side, Panurges humorous
And deep Don Quixotes there abide,
If nought but Shakespeare thou didst bear, À sacred land we must thee hold,
Since neath thy skies the selfsame air
One breathes that Shakespeare breathed of old ;
Since there by the same sun one writes, Whereby he used the pen to ply,
And in the taverns topes anights Wheras he drank of days gone by.
. But, going on the quest T’ve seen An hundred poets blooming here And there in thy vast forest green And eke have learned to hold them dear
Their verse with colour coruscates, Born of their yearning for the sun.
And with emotion palpitates,
When the red blood in floods doth run.
The dreamy melancholy they
Have, that on misted summits dwells, Whiles by the frenzy blown away That from the foaming wine cup wells.
O land of holy liberty,
Where Art in quiet flourishes I drain my goblet unto thee The dream it of my spirit is.
So I may live my life in glee,
And every savour taste — to drink As drink thy poets frank and free And as thy topers think, to think,
The North Cape.
(le Cap Nord).
Henri Cazalis.
Mid mist the whiteness stern of the long Polar nights, Sombre and silent, see, the North Capes’ summits rise; The towering peak, erect beneath the stellar nights À giant seems, that guards the portals of the skies.
The Ocean at its feet, still struggles and laments;
With myriad sounded voice, old ocean sobs and raves; And wbhilst the polar wins the weltering tide torments The tranquil giant soars above the unresting waves.
Far yonder at this hour envelop ed in the spell Of dreams and slumber, lie, in shadow, all as one, The folk of Europe and the tribes innumerable
Of ancient Africa, black leman of the sun.
Time yonder reigns, and Crime and Pain and Malefice And Love and Death about the highways wandering go; But here the soul of man, in face of the abyss,
Views with disdain, the vain, void human din below.
And mutely contemplates the spaces taciturn The sombre palace-halls, where sleeps Eternity, Coldly illumined by the haggard lamp nocturn Of the pale moon that floats o’er this immensity.
The Smile.
(le Sourire).
Charles Fuster.
One cannot always laugh, but one, Come what there may, can always smile.
Loves sorrowful there are; but none However sad, sighs all the while.
One smileth inly, without speech, When Reason up in arms must yield;
And when we part must, each from each, We smile so tears may be concealed.
’Tis as à radiance of the sun That Jesus’ smile I picture me.
’Tis by the softened smile indeed Young Mother’s are such touching things.
But old folk’s smiles are by the rays engendered Engendered of the inner light.
For human nature still somewhat À clamorous joy distrusts and loud
Preferring to the noontide hot The smiling shadow of a cloud
Let us at passing children smile And dreamy lovers wandering by.
For every truce and respite while Thanks rendering with smiling eye
Smile when thy hand the need allays Of those who’re torn of Fortune vile;
And in the evening of thy days, Strive to be brave enough to smile.
Conquistadores.
' (Les conquérants) José-Maria de Hérédia.
As’ twere à flight of hawks from out the natal nest, Weary of dragging on their haughty miseries,
Captains and cavaliers, all, launching on the seas, Departed, with à rude, héroic dream possest,
The fabulous gold it was wherof they went in quest, That Cathay ripens, in her mines far cavities;
And the trade winds inclined their wandering argosies Tow’rd the mysterious shores of the world of the West. Each night lulled by the hope of epic morrows new, The tropic ocean’s clear and phosphorescent blue With mirages of gold enchanted all their sleep;
Or peering through the maze of cordage and of spars, Leant, on the caravel’s white bows, they watched new stars Into an unknown Heaven, rise from the briny deep.
The dead maïid.
(La fille morte.)
Paul Fort
The pretty maid is dead, is dead in her loves’ way; They bore her to the grave, the grave at break of day;
They laid her there alône, alone, in her array:
They laid her all alone, alone within the clay;
And gaily, gaily back, they came with the full day, And gaily gaily « each must have his turn » sang they; « The pretty maid is dead, is dead in her loves’ way; » And to the fields they weat, they went as every day.
Triolets to my dear (Triolets à mon amour.) Charles le Goffic.
Since that you love me, my heart knows, No need of other what have I.
Appeased soon will be all my woes, Since that you love me my heart knows And that your hands of lys and rose, Will close my eyelids when I die.
Since that you love me, my heart knows, No need of other what have I.
Fain at this present would I die
So I might have you by my bed Go, come, laugh, prattle me anigh.
Fain at this present would I die Inhaling with my parting sigh
The break of balm of your lips red.
Fain at this present would I die
So I might have you by my bed.
Jasmines of Aden, roses white
From Scotland far, pinks from the East, Eglantine, orange-blossoms bright, Jasmines of Aden, roses white,
Tell me what flowers behove aright
To furnish forth our bridal feast -Jasmines of Aden, roses white
From Scotland far, pinks from the East.
- By lake and forest, far and nigh Bare footed, cost it what it may l'11 go to call them day and night By lake and forest, far and nigh.
Alas ! Belike, the good luck I.
Shall have to perish by the way; By lake and forest far and nigh Bare footed, cost it what it may.
The Faithless One.
(l’Incrédule.)
Maurice Maeterlinck.
« And what if he come back one day Behoveth me say ? »
« Tell him I awaited him, I.
Till needs must I die. » :
« And if he should ask where thou art, What answer shall I? »
Nay give him this ring on my part.
And make no reply. »
« And if he should seek to know why Deserte d’ $s the Hall? »
« Show, show him the lamp quenched and dry, The doors open all. »
« And if he should ask ask of the tide Of my falling asleep? »
« Tell, tell him I smiled as I died, For fear he should weep. »
Apparition.
(l’Apparition) Stéphane Mallarmé.
The moon was growing sad; the Seraphin in tears Dreamily, bow in hand, amidst the flowering spheres
Calm, vaporous, a-sit, from languorous viols drew Long sobbing chords, that slid athwart the flower cup’s blue.
It was the blessed day of thy first kiss; my thought, That still to martyrise itself, hath tended, sought Intoxication from the sense of sadness slight,
Wich, even without regret or check, its bliss to blight The culling of à dream leaves in the culler’s heart.
With eyes upon the ground, wandering I went apart, When sudden, with the sun of evening in thy hair,
Thou, laughing, in mid-street, appear’dst to me, my fair; And I the fay to see thougt, chapleted with light,
Who on my spoilt child’s dreams of olden time, by night Passed, and from her two hands ill-closed, was ever fain White bouquets of snow-stars, flower-breathed on me to rain.
For Ever.
(A Jamais)
François Coppée.
« For ever » love, your lips on mine, you said to me, Yet we one day must part. It is the law of fate, One of us will by death be taken soon or late
And will go sleep beneath the yew or willow tree.
Ofttimes the sailors old, who idle on the quay
Have seen the flagged bark come back to the harbour-gate Till one day it set sail for the North, since that date,
No tidings more; it lost was in the Polar Sea.
To harbour in my eaves, when blue the breeze of Spring, The migrant birds again for twenty years did wing; But this last summertide the nests their swallows lack
So an eternal love sweetheart to me you swore; But I of partings think that know no comings back ! Wherefore on mortal lips the words : « For evermore ? »
Pos
The Dove ?
(La Colombe)
Stances choisies Louis Bouilhet.
An ancient full of faces, stern and hoar,
One of those sable wrecks of bitter memory,
That sleep by Time’s waves cast up on the age’s shore When as religions low sink, like the ebbing sea.
The thresholds crumbled were; the gates were worn with rain And the rent roofs let in the moons whole silver sheen. Amiddleward the route the Emperor left his train!
And entering, pensive, paced the frigid walls between.
The marble columns tall lay at his feet abased
Strewing the pavement cracked, that showed the naked sods; High grasses climbed the walls, and girt each statues waist; Storks sat and dreamed upon the shoulders of the Gods.
Bytimes à sound of wings the silence broke; anon
One in the distance heard as’ twere à passing sigh And Phoebe, cold as they, her faithful brow upon
The mighty vanquished one inclining, watched them die.
As he there abode, sunken in thought and night In the far temple-deeps forth of the shadow dim With à confused sound of plaints à trembling light He saw detach itself, and make, it seemed for him.
Steps on the pavement rang the sound of a man’s tread
A greybeard tall drew near, lean, haggard, bowed and lame, Wearing though all in rags à tiara on his head,
Bearing à lamp in hand and weeping as he came.
Hiding beneath his cloak à dove he came to bring, Last priest of the past Gods à sacrifice supreme,
On the last altar, he the last burnt offering
And the Emperor went, for perished was his dream.
