French literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Symbolism in literature
Goat's leaf grows under my May forest. The sun drops in gold through
the heavy gloom. A roe-buck stirs in the leaves he gathers. The breeze
in the frieze of birches passes from leaf to leaf.
The grasses are silvered in my May field. There the sun gleams like a
play of swords. A bee vibrates to the lilies of the valley in the lane
of tall grouped flowers, towards the bed of the stream. The breeze
sings in the frieze of the ash-trees.
(Tr. 12)
Where is the Marguerite, O gué, o gué, where is the Marguerite? She is
in her château, weary and tired at heart, She is in her hamlet, gay
and childish at heart. She is in her grave, let us gather there the
lily-of-the-valley, O gué, the Marguerite.
(Tr. 13)
Where are our beloved ones? They are in the grave; they are happier in
a fairer sojourn.
(Tr. 14)
Of what use is beauty? Its use is to go in earth, to be eaten by worms,
to be eaten by worms....
(Tr. 15)
Do you not feel in you the opulence of being only for yourself
beautiful, O Sea, and of being yourself?
(Tr. 17)
Nature is a temple where living pillars sometimes let confused words
issue; man passes there through forests of symbols watching him with
friendly gaze.
Like long echoes blended in distance to deep, dim unity, vast as night
and clear as day, the perfumes, colors and sounds answer each other.
(Tr. 18)
The flesh is sad, alas! and I have read all the books.
To fly yonder! I feel that the birds are drunk
At being among the unknown foam and the heavens....
An autumn strewn with stains of redness....
And you were the sobbing whiteness of lilies....
I bring you the child of an Idumean night....
His neck will shake off this white agony....
(Tr. 19)
The dream, in a heliotrope robe, and her thought on her fingers, with
loosened girdle, passes, lightly grazing souls with her cloud train, to
the extinct rhythm of a music of other times.
(Tr. 20)
In the lingering fragrance of an evening of the last days.
(Tr. 21)
The roses of the west shed their leaves on the stream; and, in the pale
emotion of the falling evening, is evoked an autumnal park where, on a
bench, dreams my youth, already sober as a widow.
(Tr. 22)
Chastely you walked in the robe of your soul, which desire followed
like a tamed faun; I breathed through the evening, O purity, my dream
enveloped in your womanly veils.
(Tr. 23)
Fair verses where the fluid sense is loosened like the hair of Ophelia
under the water. Silent verses, without rhythm or trammels, where
noiselessly the rhyme slips like an oar. Verses of an old thin stuff,
impalpable as sound or cloud. Verses of autumnal evenings bewitching
the hours with the feminine rite of minor syllables. Verses of evenings
of loves enervated with verbena, where, exquisitely, the soul hardly
feels a caress.
(Tr. 24)
In the splendor of violet moonlights.
(Tr. 25)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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