Les Elfes
by Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894)

Couronnes de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

Du sentier des bois aux daims familier,
Sur un noir cheval, sort un chevalier.
Son éperon d’or brille en la nuit brune;
Et, quand il traverse un rayon de lune,
On voit resplendir, d’un reflet changeant,
Sur sa chevelure un casque d’argent.

Couronnés de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

Ils l’entourent tous d’un essaim léger
Qui dans l’air muet semble voltiger.
— Hardi chevalier, par la nuit sereine,
Où vas-tu si tard? dit la jeune Reine.
De mauvais esprits hantent les forêts;
Viens danser plutôt sur les gazons frais. —

Couronnés de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

— Non! ma fiancée aux yeux clairs et doux
M’attend, et demain nous serons époux.
Laissez-moi passer, Elfes des prairies,
Qui foulez en rond les mousses fleuries;
Ne m’attardez pas loin de mon amour,
Car voici déjà les lueurs du jour. —

Couronnés de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

— Reste, chevalier. Je te donnerai
L’opale magique et l’anneau doré,
Et, ce qui vaut mieux que gloire et fortune,
Ma robe filée au clair de la lune.
— Non! dit-il. — Va donc! — Et de son doigt blanc
Elle touche au cœur le guerrier tremblant.

Couronnés de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

Et sous l’éperon le noir cheval part.
Il court, il bondit et va sans retard;
Mais le chevalier frissonne et se penche;
Il voit sur la route une forme blanche
Qui marche sans bruit et lui tend les bras:
— Elfe, esprit, démon, ne m’arrête pas! —

Couronnés de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

Ne m’arrête pas, fantôme odieux!
Je vais épouser ma belle aux doux yeux.
— Ô mon cher époux, la tombe éternelle
Sera notre lit de noce, dit-elle.
Je suis morte! — Et lui, la voyant ainsi,
D’angoisse et d’amour tombe mort aussi.

Couronnés de thym et de marjolaine,
Les Elfes joyeux dansent sur la plaine.

Views: 58

Frost at Midnight
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

                           But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

   Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

   Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Views: 38

Ma Bohème
by Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)

Je m’en allais, les poings dans mes poches crevées;
Mon paletot aussi devenait idéal;
J’allais sous le ciel, Muse! et j’étais ton féal;
Oh! là là! que d’amours splendides j’ai rêvées!

Mon unique culotte avait un large trou.
— Petit Poucet rêveur, j’égrenais dans ma course
Des rimes. Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse;
— Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou.

Et je les écoutais, assis au bord des routes,
Ces bons soirs de septembre où je sentais des gouttes
De rosée à mon front, comme un vin de vigueur;

Où, rimant au milieu des ombres fantastiques,
Comme des lyres, je tirais les élastiques
De mes souliers blessés, un pied près de mon cœur!

Views: 32

The Nile
by Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)

It flows through old hush’d Egypt and its sands,
      Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream;
      And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,—
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
      That roam’d through the young earth, the glory extreme
      Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam.
The laughing queen that caught the world’s great hands.
Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
As of a world left empty of its throng,
      And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
      ’Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
      Our own calm journey on for human sake.

Views: 38

The Dry Year
by Yvor Winters (1900-1968)

No rain stirs;
And the dust
On floors is still;
The moonlit nights
Like dust
Or withered leaves.

Views: 39

Sonnet to Liberty
by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Not that I loved thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds known nothing, nothing care to know, –
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea
And give my rage a brother — Liberty!
For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved – and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things.

Views: 38

Puella Mea
by E.E. Cummings (1894-1962)

Harun Omar and Master Hafiz
keep your dead beautiful ladies.
Mine is a little lovelier
than any of your ladies were.

In her perfectest array
my lady, moving in the day,
is a little stranger thing
than crisp Sheba with her king
in the morning wandering.
         Through the young and awkward hours
my lady perfectly moving,
through the new world scarce astir
my fragile lady wandering
in whose perishable poise
is the mystery of Spring
(with her beauty more than snow
dexterous and fugitive
my very frail lady drifting
distinctly, moving like a myth
in the uncertain morning, with
April feet like sudden flowers
and all her body filled with May)
—moving in the unskilful day
my lady utterly alive,
to me is a more curious thing
(a thing more nimble and complete)
than ever to Judea’s king
were the shapely sharp cunning
and withal delirious feet
of the Princess Salomé
carefully dancing in the noise
of Herod’s silence, long ago.

If she a little turn her head
I know that I am wholly dead:
nor ever did on such a throat
the lips of Tristram slowly dote,
La beale Isoud whose leman was.
And if my lady look at me
(with her eyes which like two elves
incredibly amuse themselves)
with a look of faerie,
perhaps a little suddenly
(as sometimes the improbable
beauty of my lady will)
—at her glance my spirit shies
rearing (as in the miracle
of a lady who had eyes
which the king’s horses might not kill.)
         But should my lady smile, it were
a flower of so pure surprise
(it were so very new a flower,
a flower so frail, a flower so glad)
as trembling used to yield with dew
when the world was young and new
(a flower such as the world had
in springtime when the world was mad
and Launcelot spoke to Guenever,
a flower which most heavy hung
with silence when the world was young
and Diarmid looked in Grania’s eyes.)
         But should my lady’s beauty play
at not speaking (sometimes as
it will) the silence of her face
doth immediately make
in my heart so great a noise,
as in the sharp and thirsty blood
of Paris would not all the Troys
of Helen’s beauty: never did
Lord Jason (in impossible things
victorious impossibly)
so wholly burn, to undertake
Medea’s rescuing eyes; nor he
when swooned the white egyptian day
who with Egypt’s body lay.

Lovely as those ladies were
mine is a little lovelier.

And if she speak in her frail way,
it is wholly to bewitch
my smallest thought with a most swift
radiance wherein slowly drift
murmurous things divinely bright;
it is foolingly to smite
my spirit with the lithe free twitch
of scintillant space, with the cool writhe
of gloom truly which syncopate
some sunbeam’s skilful fingerings;
it is utterly to lull
with foliate inscrutable
sweetness my soul obedient;
it is to stroke my being with
numbing forests, frolicsome,
fleetly mystical, aroam
with keen creatures of idiom
(beings alert and innocent
very deftly upon which
indolent miracles impinge)
—it is distinctly to confute
my reason with the deep caress
of every most shy thing and mute,
it is to quell me with the twinge
of all living intense things.
         Never my soul so fortunate
is (past the luck of all dead men
and loving) as invisibly when
upon her palpable solitude
a furtive occult fragrance steals,
a gesture of immaculate
perfume—whereby (with fear aglow)
my soul is wont wholly to know
the poignant instantaneous fern
whose scrupulous enchanted fronds
toward all things intrinsic yearn,
the immanent subliminal
fern of her delicious voice
(of her voice which always dwells
beside the vivid magical
impetuous and utter ponds
of dream; and very secret food
its leaves inimitable find
beyond the white authentic springs,
beyond the sweet instinctive wells,
which make to flourish the minute
spontaneous meadow of her mind)
—the vocal fern, alway which feels
the keen ecstatic actual tread
(and thereto perfectly responds)
of all things exquisite and dead,
all living things and beautiful.

(Caliph and king their ladies had
to love them and to make them glad,
when the world was young and mad,
in the city of Bagdad—
mine is a little lovelier
than any of their ladies were.)

Her body is most beauteous,
being for all things amorous
fashioned very curiously
of roses and of ivory.
The immaculate crisp head
is such as only certain dead
and careful painters love to use
for their youngest angels (whose
praising bodies in a row
between slow glories fleetly go.)
Upon a keen and lovely throat
the strangeness of her face doth float,
which in eyes and lips consists
—alway upon the mouth there trysts
curvingly a fragile smile
which like a flower lieth (while
within the eyes is dimly heard
a wistful and precarious bird.)
Springing from fragrant shoulders small,
ardent, and perfectly withal
smooth to stroke and sweet to see
as a supple and young tree,
her slim lascivious arms alight
in skilful wrists which hint at flight
—my lady’s very singular
and slenderest hands moreover are
(which as lilies smile and quail)
of all things perfect the most frail.

(Whoso rideth in the tale
of Chaucer knoweth many a pair
of companions blithe and fair;
who to walk with Master Gower
in Confessio doth prefer
shall not lack for beauty there,
nor he that will amaying go
with my lord Boccaccio—
whoso knocketh at the door
of Marie and of Maleore
findeth of ladies goodly store
whose beauty did in nothing err.
If to me there shall appear
than a rose more sweetly known,
more silently than a flower,
my lady naked in her hair—
I for those ladies nothing care
nor any lady dead and gone.)

When the world was like a song
heard behind a golden door,
poet and sage and caliph had
to love them and to make them glad
ladies with lithe eyes and long
(when the world was like a flower
Omar Hafiz and Harun
loved their ladies in the moon)
—fashioned very curiously
of roses and ivory
if naked she appear to me
my flesh is an enchanted tree;
with her lips’ most frail parting
my body hears the cry of Spring,
and with their frailest syllable
its leaves go crisp with miracle.

Love!—maker of my lady,
in that alway beyond this
poem or any poem she
of whose body words are afraid
perfectly beautiful is,
forgive these words which I have made.
And never boast your dead beauties,
you greatest lovers in the world!
never boast your beauties dead
who with Grania strangely fled,
who with Egypt went to bed,
whom white-thighed Semiramis
put up her mouth to wholly kiss—
never boast your dead beauties,
mine being unto me sweeter
(of whose why delicious glance
things which never more shall be,
perfect things of faerie,
are intense inhabitants;
in whose warm superlative
body do distinctly live
all sweet cities passed away—
in her flesh at break of day
are the smells of Nineveh,
in her eyes when day is gone
are the cries of Babylon.)
Diarmid Paris and Solomon,
Omar Harun and Master Hafiz,
to me your ladies are all one—
keep your dead beautiful ladies.

Eater of all things lovely—Time!
upon whose watering lips the world
poises a moment (futile, proud,
a costly morsel of sweet tears)
gesticulates, and disappears—
of all dainties which do crowd
gaily upon oblivion
sweeter than any there is one;
to touch it is the fear of rhyme—
in life’s very fragile hour
(when the world was like a tale
made of laughter and of dew,
was a flight, a flower, a flame,
was a tendril fleetly curled
upon frailness) used to stroll
(very slowly) one or two
ladies like flowers made,
softly used to wholly move
slender ladies made of dream
(in the lazy world and new
sweetly used to laugh and love
ladies with crisp eyes and frail,
in the city of Bagdad.)

Keep your dead beautiful ladies
Harun Omar and Master Hafiz.

Views: 35

Infant Eyes
by Ernest Myers (1844-1921)

Blood of my blood, bone of my bone,
Heart of my being’s heart,
Strange visitant, yet very son;
All this, and more, thou art.

In thy soft lineaments I trace,
More winning daily grown,
The sweetness of thy mother’s face
Transfiguring my own.

That grave but all untroubled gaze,
So rapt yet never dim,
Seems following o’er their starry ways
The wings of cherubim.

Two worlds man hardly may descry,
(For manhood clouds them o’er),
Commingled to mine inward eye
Are shadowed forth once more:

That lost world, whither man’s regret
With fictive fancy turns;
That world to come, where brighter yet
The star of promise burns.

Time and his weary offspring Care
Fade in that gaze away;
One moment mystically fair
Lives on, one timeless day.

Views: 30

At a Solemn Musick
by John Milton (1608-1674)

Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heav’ns joy,
Sphere-born harmonious Sisters, Voice, and Verse,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixt power employ
Dead things with inbreath’d sense able to pierce,
And to our high-rais’d phantasie present,
That undisturbed Song of pure content,
Ay sung before the saphire-colour’d throne
To him that fits thereon
With Saintly shout, and solemn Jubily,
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row
Their loud up-lifted Angel trumpets blow,
And the Cherubick host in thousand quires
Touch their immortal Harps of golden wires.
With those just Spirits that wear victorious Palms,
Hymns devout and holy Psalms
Singing everlastingly;
That we on Earth with undiscording voice
May rightly answer that melodious noise;
As once we did, till disproportion’d sin
Jarr’d against natures chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair musick that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway’d
In perfect Diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good.
O may we soon again renew that Song,
And keep in tune with Heav’n, till God ere long
To his celestial consort us unite,
To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light.

Views: 39

Kein Freud Ohne Schmerz
by Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664)

Kein Freud ist ohne Schmerz, kein Wollust ohne Klagen,
   Kein Stand, kein Ort, kein Mensch ist seines Kreuzes frei.
   Wo schöne Rosen blühn, stehn scharfe Dorn dabei,
Wer außen lacht, hat oft im Herzen tausend Plagen,
Wer hoch in Ehren sitzt, muß hohe Sorgen tragen,
   Wer ist, der Reichtum acht′ und los von Kummer sei?
   Wer auch kein’ Kummer hat, fühlt doch, wie mancherlei
Traurwürmlin seine Seel und matte Sinn durchnagen.

Ich sag es offenbar, so lang der Sonnen Licht
Vom Himmel hat bestrahlt mein bleiches Angesicht,
   Ist mir noch nie ein Tag, der ganz ohn Angst, bescheret!
O Welt, du Tränental, recht selig wird geschätzt,
Der, eh er einen Fuß hin auf die Erden setzt,
   Bald aus der Mutter Schoß ins Himmelslusthaus fähret.

Views: 57