Clair de Lune by Paul Verlaine

                                                               Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

CLAIR de LUNE

Your soul is a chosen landscape Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go Playing the lute and dancing and almost Sad beneath their fanciful disguises. All sing in a minor key Of victorious love and the opportune life, They do not seem to believe in their happiness And their song mingles with the moonlight, With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful, That sets the birds dreaming in the trees And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy, The tall slender fountains among marble statues. ~ Paul Verlaine      In this beautiful poem of twelve lines the sad attempt to be joyful when they are not,       yet the majesty of the courtyard, lit by the moon, is a constant symbol of eternal joy.      Verlaine was a master poet, and the haunting musicality of his verse needs no attending       instrumentation.   The meter is very liberal, yet in its completed text it is chiseled as a       statue is chiseled.  The first line contains only eight syllables.  The second contains twelve.      Yet with Verlaine they are compatible musically, and such changes in metrical relationships      actually add to, rather than distract or subtract from the music of his verse.       John Lars Zwerenz

SENSATION by Arthur Rimbaud

Sensation

On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,
Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass:
In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.
I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.

I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing:
But endless love will mount in my soul;
And I shall travel far, very far, like a gypsy,
Through the countryside - as happy as if I were with a woman.

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)

This translation is direct from the original French text.

Consider the alternate version below:

SENSATION

On summer evenings blue, pricked by the wheat

On rustic paths the thin grass I shall tread,

And feel its freshness underneath my feet,

And dreaming, let the wind bathe my bare head.

I shall not speak, nor think, but walking slow

Through nature, I shall rove with love my guide,

As gypsies wander, where, they do not know,

happy as one walks by a woman's side. 

(Translation: Jethro Bithel)

This second translation represents the effect of reading this small, rhymed poem in its original French form.

Consider the rhyming scheme in the French text below:

Par les soirs bleus d'été, j'irai dans les sentiers,
Picoté par les blés, fouler l'herbe menue :
Réveur, j'en sentirai la fraîcheur mes pieds.
Je laisserai le vent baigner ma tète nue ! 

Je ne parlerai pas, je ne penserai rien :
Mais l'amour infïni me montera dans l'âme,
Et j'irai loin, bien loin, comme un bohémien
Par la Nature, -- heureux comme avec une femme.

ABAB ABAB

The brilliance of this poem lies in its apparent simplicity of form and language.   Yet this poem is an excellent example of a concealed mastery of the poetic tongue.     Rimbaud makes what is very hard to compose: the "perfect" poem, seem like easy business.

John Lars Zwerenz

  

To One In Paradise by Edgar Allen Poe

                                                          Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

To One in Paradise

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

Thou wast that all to me, love,

   For which my soul did pine—

A green isle in the sea, love,

   A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,

   And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

   Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast!

   A voice from out the Future cries,

“On! on!”—but o’er the Past

   (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies

Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me

   The light of Life is o’er!

No more—no more—no more—

   (Such language holds the solemn sea

To the sands upon the shore)

   Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,

Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,

   And all my nightly dreams

Are where thy grey eye glances,

   And where thy footstep gleams—

In what ethereal dances,

   By what eternal streams.

 ~ Edgar Allan Poe         

         In this astounding verse Poe languishes over the lost love of his past while in the last stanza he expresses his current state of ethereal communion with his deceased beloved.  In the final stanza especially, Poe employs the use of double rhyming and alliteration.   This poem also, by utilizing an almost equal balance of consonant and vowel sounds, produces a very rich, melodic sound when read aloud or in silence. 

My comments in this series of posts will always be brief, and I hope, to the point.

John Lars Zwerenz