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Don Quixote
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Topic: AE Poetry Club Posted: 14-Mar-2012 at 13:34
Verlaine:
(Fêtes
Galants: A La Promenade )
Seem to smile at our bright dress
That floats lightly, with an excess
Of nonchalance, a wing-like tremor.
And the gentle wind wrinkles the pool,
And the light of the sun that softens too
The shade of the limes on the avenue
Renders us, as it will, mordant, blue.
Exquisite deceivers, charming coquettes
Tender hearts, but devoid of vows,
Speak with us delightfully and bow,
And lovers flirt with their little pets,
A hand imperceptibly will enlist
Now and then a tap, exchanged
For a kiss on the little finger ranged
At the very tip, and since the thing is
Immensely excessive and quite fierce,
One is punished by a withering glance,
Which contrasts with, as it may chance,
The forgiving pout that the lips rehearse.
Edited by Don Quixote - 14-Mar-2012 at 13:35
Don Quixote
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Posted: 15-Mar-2012 at 19:07
Verlaine:
(Fêtes Galants: Les Ingénus )
So that, a question of slopes and breezes,
Ankles sometimes glimmered to please us,
Ah, intercepted! – Dear foolishnesses!
Sometimes a jealous insect’s sting
Troubled necks of beauties under the branches,
White napes revealed in sudden flashes
A feast for our young eyes’ wild gazing.
Evening fell, ambiguous autumn evening:
The beauties, dreamers who leaned on our arms,
Whispered soft words, so deceptive, such charms,
That our souls were left quivering and singing.
Edited by Don Quixote - 15-Mar-2012 at 19:11
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Posted: 16-Mar-2012 at 11:45
Verlaine
(Fêtes Galants: Cortège )
Gambols and cavorts for She
Who twists a lace handkerchief
In her hand gloved to the wrist,
While a small black slave in red
Holds the train, at arm’s length,
Of her heavy robe, intent
To see that no fold’s disordered.
The monkey never takes his eyes
From the lady’s soft white throat.
Opulent treasure whose rich note
Asks a god’s torso, bare, as prize.
The slave will sometimes raise the height,
Rascal, higher than he needs,
Of his sumptuous load, so he
May see what he dreams of at night;
Yet she appears now unaware
As up the flight of stairs she goes
How insolent approval shows
In her familiar creatures’ stare.
Edited by Don Quixote - 16-Mar-2012 at 11:48
Don Quixote
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Posted: 17-Mar-2012 at 23:44
Verlaine
(Fêtes
Galants : Les Coquillages )
In the cave where we sought love’s goal,
Has its own peculiarity.
One has the purple colour of souls,
Ours, thief of the blood our hearts possess
When I burn and you flame, like hot coals.
That one affects your languorousness,
Your pallor, your weary form
Angered by my eyes’ mocking caress:
This one mimics the charm
Of your ear, and this I see
Your rosy neck, so full and warm:
But one, among all of them, troubled me.
Edited by Don Quixote - 17-Mar-2012 at 23:48
Don Quixote
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Posted: 18-Mar-2012 at 16:57
Verlaine:
(Fêtes
Galants: En Bateau )
The steersman, in darker waters,
Seeks fire in the depths of his trousers.
Now’s the hour, Gentlemen, or never,
To be daring, and you’ll discover
My hands, from now on, all over!
Atys, the knight, scratching at
His guitar, on cool Chloris casts
A glance, and a wicked one at that.
The priest confesses poor Églé,
And that Vicomte, in disarray,
Prince of the Fields, gives his heart away.
Meanwhile the moon sheds its glow
On the skiff’s brief course below,
Gaily riding the dream-like flow.
Edited by Don Quixote - 18-Mar-2012 at 16:59
Don Quixote
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Posted: 19-Mar-2012 at 19:46
Verlaine:
(Fêtes Galants: Le Faune )
Centring the bowling-green
Laughs, without doubt presaging,
A sad end to this time serene,
Which has led me and has led you,
Melancholy pilgrims lean,
To this hour whose vanishing
Swirls to the sounding tambourine.
Edited by Don Quixote - 19-Mar-2012 at 19:47
Don Quixote
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Posted: 20-Mar-2012 at 17:51
Verlaine:
(Fêtes
Galants: Mandoline )
And their lovely listeners
Swap insipid remarks, made
Beneath singing branches.
Here are Tircis and Aminta
And the eternal Clitander,
And Damis who makes for many a
Cruel one, many a verse that’s tender.
Their jackets of silk cut short,
The long trains of their robes,
Their elegance, joyous retorts,
And their soft bluish shadows,
Whirl in the ecstasy
Of a moon that’s pink and grey,
While among the gusts of breeze
The mandoline tinkles away.
Edited by Don Quixote - 20-Mar-2012 at 17:52
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Posted: 22-Mar-2012 at 02:41
Verlaine:
(Fêtes Galants: A Clymène )
Romances without words,
Dear, because your eyes
The shade of skies,
Because your voice, strange
Vision that must derange,
Troubling the horizon
Of my reason,
Because the rare perfume
Of your swanlike paleness,
Because the innocence
Of your fragrance,
Ah, because all your being,
Music so piercing,
Clouds of lost angels,
Tones and scents,
Has by soft cadences
With its correspondences,
Lured my subtle heart, Oh
Let it be so!
Edited by Don Quixote - 22-Mar-2012 at 02:41
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Posted: 22-Mar-2012 at 17:36
Verlaine:
(Fêtes Galants: L’Amour par Terre )
Who, in the park’s most mysterious corner,
Would bend his bow in guileful laughter,
His aspect causing us to daydream so!
Last night’s wind toppled him! The marble
Shattered with dawn’s breath. It’s sad to see
His pedestal, with sculptor’s name a mystery,
Scarce legible in the shadow of an arbour.
Oh, it’s sad to see the empty pedestal
All bare! And melancholy fancies entering
Wander through my dream, where deep chagrin
Calls up a future solitary and fateful.
Oh, it’s sad! – And you feel it, yes, you too,
Touched by the sight, though your roaming eye
Toys with the gold and crimson butterfly
Skimming the debris on the pathway strewn.
Edited by Don Quixote - 22-Mar-2012 at 17:37
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Posted: 23-Mar-2012 at 10:54
Verlaine:
(Fêtes Galants: En Sourdine )
Tall branches surround,
Let our love be filled by
This silence profound.
Hearts and souls blend there
And senses’ ecstasy,
With the vague languor
Of pine and strawberry.
With eyelids scarce apart,
Arms crossed in dream,
From your slumbering heart
Chase forever every scheme.
Let’s be convinced at last
By the sweet lulling breeze
That makes the russet grass
Wave, in ripples, at your feet.
And when solemn evening
Falls from black oaks there,
The nightingale will sing,
The voice of our despair.
Edited by Don Quixote - 23-Mar-2012 at 10:57
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Posted: 25-Mar-2012 at 20:13
Verlaine:
(Fêtes Galants: En Sourdine )
Tall branches surround,
Let our love be filled by
This silence profound.
Hearts and souls blend there
And senses’ ecstasy,
With the vague languor
Of pine and strawberry.
With eyelids scarce apart,
Arms crossed in dream,
From your slumbering heart
Chase forever every scheme.
Let’s be convinced at last
By the sweet lulling breeze
That makes the russet grass
Wave, in ripples, at your feet.
And when solemn evening
Falls from black oaks there,
The nightingale will sing,
The voice of our despair.
Edited by Don Quixote - 25-Mar-2012 at 20:38
Don Quixote
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Posted: 27-Mar-2012 at 01:25
Verlaine:
(Fêtes Galants: Colloque Sentimental )
Two dark shadows lately passed.
Their lips were slack, eyes were blurred,
The words they spoke scarcely heard.
In the lonely old park’s frozen glass
Two spectral forms invoked the past.
‘Do you recall our former ecstasies?’
‘Why would you have me rake up memories?’
‘Does your heart still beat at my name alone?’
‘Is it always my soul you see in dream?’ – ‘Ah, no’.
‘Oh the lovely days of unspeakable mystery,
When our mouths met!’ – ‘Ah yes, maybe.’
‘How blue it was, the sky, how high our hopes!’
‘Hope fled, conquered, along the dark slopes.’
So they walked there, among the wild herbs,
And the night alone listened to their words.
Edited by Don Quixote - 27-Mar-2012 at 01:27
Don Quixote
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Posted: 28-Mar-2012 at 00:30
Verlaine:
(La Bonne
Chanson: III )
One June day, I was feeling anxious,
She appeared, smiling at my glances,
The one I admired without fear of
ill.
She came, went, returned, spoke, and sat,
Serious, light, ironic, tender,
And I felt, deep in my soul, so sombre,
Some joyous reflection of all that:
Her voice, its subtle music’s tone,
Delightfully accompanying
The artless wit of a sweet chattering
Where a kind heart’s joy was shown.
I was as quickly, once the semblance
Of my rebellion was over, wholly
In the power of that little Fairy,
As since I’ve sought to be, trembling.
Edited by Don Quixote - 28-Mar-2012 at 00:34
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Posted: 30-Mar-2012 at 13:31
Verlaine:
(La
Bonne Chanson: V )
Morning star that shines,
– A thousand
quail
Calling, calling in the thyme –
Turn towards your poet,
With sad eyes so lovelorn,
– The lark as
yet
Still climbs the sky with dawn –
Turn here your gaze, that day
Drowns in his azure;
– What joy
always
In fields of ripening corn! –
And make my thoughts glow
There – far, oh, far away,
– The dew
shines so,
Shines glistening on the hay –
Within the sweet dream
Where yet my love makes one…
– Swiftly, swiftly,
For here’s the golden sun! –
Edited by Don Quixote - 30-Mar-2012 at 13:31
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Posted: 05-Apr-2012 at 01:26
Verlaine:
(La Bonne Chanson: VI )
Shines in the trees:
From each bright
Branch a voice flees
Beneath leaves that move,
O well-beloved.
The pools reflect
A mirror’s depth,
The silhouette
Of willows’ wet
Black where the wind weeps…
Let us dream, time sleeps.
It seems a vast, soothing,
Tender balm
Is falling
From heaven’s calm
Empurpled by a star…
It’s the exquisite hour.
Edited by Don Quixote - 05-Apr-2012 at 01:31
Don Quixote
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Posted: 10-Apr-2012 at 02:48
Verlaine:
(La Bonne
Chanson: VIII )
A Chatelaine in her tower,
All that contains the soul
Of human grace and amour;
The gilded note; the sound
Of a horn in the woods far away,
Wed to the tender pride found
In noble Ladies of yesterday;
With that, the lofty charm
Of a fresh conquering smile
Born in the swan’s pure calm
And the blushes of a grown child;
Pearl aspects, of white and rose,
Sweet patrician harmony:
I see, I hear all I suppose,
In its Carolingian identity.
Edited by Don Quixote - 10-Apr-2012 at 02:49
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Posted: 12-Apr-2012 at 03:05
Verlaine:
(La Bonne
Chanson: XIV )
Dreaming there with fingers on brow
And looks wandering among loved looks;
The hour of infusions of tea, and closed books;
The sweetness at feeling the evening’s conclusion;
The charming fatigue and adored expectation
Of nuptial shadows and of the soft night,
Oh, all that, my fond dream pursues in flight
Relentlessly, beyond all vain remissions,
Raging at weeks, impatient with seasons!
Edited by Don Quixote - 12-Apr-2012 at 03:06
Don Quixote
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Posted: 17-Apr-2012 at 02:28
Verlaine:
(La Bonne
Chanson: XV )
I felt my life so entwined
At the radiance in my mind
That last summer seized my soul,
Your image, forever dear,
So lives in this heart that’s yours,
My heart, uniquely jealous, adores
The loving and pleasing you here;
And I tremble, forgive me please
For speaking so freely to you,
To think that a word, a smile or two
From you is now my destiny,
And it only takes a gesture, but one,
Or a sound or your eye blinking,
To set all my being in mourning
With its heavenly deception.
Yet I would rather see you,
Though the future for me prove sombre
Full of miseries without number,
Than in hope’s distant view,
Plunged in this joy supreme
Tell myself ever and again,
Despite the return of such pain,
That I love you, that I love thee !
Edited by Don Quixote - 17-Apr-2012 at 02:29
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Posted: 23-Apr-2012 at 14:13
Verlaine:
(La Bonne
Chanson: XVI )
Ruined sycamores leafing on black ire:
The bus, a typhoon of mud and metal,
Bouncing, between wheels, with its rattle,
Rolling its red and green eyes slowly,
Workers off to the club, pipes smoking,
Under the eyes of police, those drones,
Roofs dripping, sweating walls, damp stones,
Broken asphalt, gutters where sewers blend,
Behold, my road – with paradise at the end.
Edited by Don Quixote - 23-Apr-2012 at 14:37
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Posted: 09-May-2012 at 01:08
Verlaine:
(La Bonne
Chanson: XVII )
Those who’ll never fail to envy our happiness,
We will sometimes be proud and forever indulgent.
Is it not so? We’ll go, gaily, slowly, on the modest
Road that reveals to us Hope smiling,
Whether we’re seen or ignored, ever careless.
Enclosed by love as in a dark wood, exhaling
Our two hearts, their peaceful tenderness,
Will be two nightingales in the dusk singing.
As for the World, let it be angered by us,
Or tender, what can its gestures signify?
Let it make us a target, or let it caress us.
Bound by the strongest and dearest tie,
And more, possessing adamantine armour,
We’ll smile and fear nothing that meets the eye.
Un-preoccupied with whatever Fate destines for
Us, marching onwards and in step we’ll go,
Hand in hand, with the childlike souls, what’s more,
Of those whose love is untainted, is it not so?
Edited by Don Quixote - 09-May-2012 at 01:11
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