Poems of Paul Verlaine | Page 7

time, well worth our own,?Believed--and it has been disproved by none--?That destinies in Heaven written are,?And every soul depends upon a star.?(Many have mocked, without remembering?That laughter oft is a misguiding thing,?This explanation of night's mystery.)?Now all that born beneath Saturnus be,--?Red planet, to the necromancer dear,--?Inherit, ancient magic-books make clear,?Good share of spleen, good share of wretchedness.?Imagination, wakeful, vigorless,?In them makes the resolves of reason vain.?The blood within them, subtle as a bane,?Burning as lava, scarce, flows ever fraught?With sad ideals that ever come to naught.?Such must Saturnians suffer, such must die,--?If so that death destruction doth imply,--?Their lives being ordered in this dismal sense?By logic of a malign Influence.
Melancholia
NEVERMORE
Remembrance, what wilt thou with me? The year?Declined; in the still air the thrush piped clear,?The languid sunshine did incurious peer?Among the thinned leaves of the forest sere.
We were alone, and pensively we strolled,?With straying locks and fancies, when, behold?Her turn to let her thrilling gaze enfold,?And ask me in her voice of living gold,
Her fresh young voice, "What was thy happiest day?"?I smiled discreetly for all answer, and?Devotedly I kissed her fair white hand.
--Ah, me! The earliest flowers, how sweet are they!?And in how exquisite a whisper slips?The earliest "Yes" from well-beloved lips!
APR��S TROIS ANS
When I had pushed the narrow garden-door,?Once more I stood within the green retreat;?Softly the morning sunshine lighted it,?And every flow'r a humid spangle wore.
Nothing is changed. I see it all once more:?The vine-clad arbor with its rustic seat. . . .?The waterjet still plashes silver sweet,?The ancient aspen rustles as of yore.
The roses throb as in a bygone day,?As they were wont, the tall proud lilies sway.?Each bird that lights and twitters is a friend.
I even found the Flora standing yet,?Whose plaster crumbles at the alley's end,?--Slim, 'mid the foolish scent of mignonette.
MON R��VE FAMILIER
Oft do I dream this strange and penetrating dream:?An unknown woman, whom I love, who loves me well,?Who does not every time quite change, nor yet quite dwell?The same,--and loves me well, and knows me as I am.
For she knows me! My heart, clear as a crystal beam?To her alone, ceases to be inscrutable?To her alone, and she alone knows to dispel?My grief, cooling my brow with her tears' gentle stream.
Is she of favor dark or fair?--I do not know.?Her name? All I remember is that it doth flow?Softly, as do the names of them we loved and lost.
Her eyes are like the statues',--mild and grave and wide;?And for her voice she has as if it were the ghost?Of other voices,--well-loved voices that have died.
A UNE FEMME
To you these lines for the consoling grace?Of your great eyes wherein a soft dream shines,?For your pure soul, all-kind!--to you these lines?From the black deeps of mine unmatched distress.
'Tis that the hideous dream that doth oppress?My soul, alas! its sad prey ne'er resigns,?But like a pack of wolves down mad inclines?Goes gathering heat upon my reddened trace!
I suffer, oh, I suffer cruelly!?So that the first man's cry at Eden lost?Was but an eclogue surely to my cry!
And that the sorrows, Dear, that may have crossed?Your life, are but as swallows light that fly?--Dear!--in a golden warm September sky.
Paysages Tristes
CHANSON D'AUTOMNE
Leaf-strewing gales?Utter low wails
Like violins,--?Till on my soul?Their creeping dole
Stealthily wins....
Days long gone by!?In such hour, I,
Choking and pale,?Call you to mind,--?Then like the wind
Weep I and wail.
And, as by wind?Harsh and unkind,
Driven by grief,?Go I, here, there,?Recking not where,
Like the dead leaf.
LE ROSSIGNOL
Like to a swarm of birds, with jarring cries?Descend on me my swarming memories;?Light mid the yellow leaves, that shake and sigh,?Of the bowed alder--that is even I!--?Brooding its shadow in the violet?Unprofitable river of Regret.?They settle screaming--Then the evil sound,?By the moist wind's impatient hushing drowned,?Dies by degrees, till nothing more is heard?Save the lone singing of a single bird,?Save the clear voice--O singer, sweetly done!--?Warbling the praises of the Absent One....?And in the silence of a summer night?Sultry and splendid, by a late moon's light?That sad and sallow peers above the hill,?The humid hushing wind that ranges still?Rocks to a whispered sleepsong languidly?The bird lamenting and the shivering tree.
Caprices
IL BACIO
Kiss! Hollyhock in Love's luxuriant close!
Brisk music played on pearly little keys,?In tempo with the witching melodies?Love in the ardent heart repeating goes.
Sonorous, graceful Kiss, hail! Kiss divine!
Unequalled boon, unutterable bliss!?Man, bent o'er thine enthralling chalice, Kiss,?Grows drunken with a rapture only thine!
Thou comfortest as music does, and wine,
And grief dies smothered in thy purple fold.?Let one greater than I, Kiss, and more bold,?Rear thee a classic, monumental line.
Humble Parisian bard, this infantile
Bouquet of rhymes I tender half in fear....?Be gracious, and in guerdon, on the dear?Red lips of One I know, alight and smile!
��PILOGUE
I?The sun, less hot, looks from a sky more clear;?The roses in their sleepy loveliness?Nod to the cradling wind. The atmosphere?Enfolds us with a sister's tenderness.
For