19 août 2008

Sonnets (Gays) de Shakespeare (3)

101

O truant muse, what shall be thy amends

For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed ?

Both truth and beauty on my love depends ;

So dost thou too, and therein dignified.

Make answer, muse. Wilt thou not haply say

'Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,

Beauty no pencil beauty's truth to lay,

But best is best if never intermixed'?

Because he needs no praise wilt thou be dumb ?

Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee

To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,

And to be praised of ages yet to be.

   Then do thy office, muse ; I teach thee how

   To make him seem long hence as he shows now.

102

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming.

I love not less, though less the show appear.

That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming

The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere.

Our love was new and then but in the spring

When I was wont to greet it with my lays,

As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,

And stops her pipe in growth of riper days -

Not that the summer is less pleasant now

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,

But that wild music burdens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

   Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue,

   Because I would not dull you with my song.

103

Alack, what poverty my muse brings forth

That, having such a scope to show her pride,

The argument all bare is of more worth

Than when it hath my added praise beside !

O blame me not if I no more can write !

Look in your glass and there appears a face

That overgoes my blunt invention quite,

Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace.

Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,

To mar the subject that before was well ? -

For to no other pass my verses tend

Than of your graces and your gifts to tell ;

   And more, much more, than in my verse can sit

   Your own glass shows you when you look in it.

104

To me, fair friend, you never can be old ;

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold

Have from the forests shook three summers' pride ;

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned

In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.

Ah yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,

Steal from his figure and no pace perceived ;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.

   For fear of which, her this, thou age unbred :

   Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

105

Let not my love be called idolatry,

Nor my belovèd as an idol show,

Since all alike my songs and praises be

To one, of one, still such, and ever so.

Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,

Still constant in a wondrous excellence.

Therefore my verse, to constancy confined,

One thing expressing, leaves out difference.

'Fair, kind, and true' is all my argument,

'Fair, kind, and true' varying to other words,

And in this change is my invention spent,

Three themes on one, which wondrous scope affords.

   Fair, kind, and true have often lived alone,

   Which three till now never kept seat in one.

 

106

When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rhyme

In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights ;

Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

I see their antique pen would have expressed

Ev'n such a beauty as you master now.

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring,

And for they looked but with divining eyes

They had not skill enough your worth to sing ;

   For we which now behold these present days

   Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

107

Not mine own fears nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world dreaming on things to come

Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage ;

Incertainties now crown themselves assured,

And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

Now with the drops of this most balmy time

My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,

Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme

While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes ;

   And thou in this shalt find thy monument

   When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

108

What's in the brain that ink may character

Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit ?

What's new to speak, what now to register,

That may express my love or thy dear merit ?

Nothing, sweet boy ; but yet like prayers divine

I must each day say o'er the very same,

Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,

Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.

So that eternal love in love's fresh case

Weighs not the dust and injury of age,

Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,

But makes antiquity for aye his page,

   Finding the first conceit of love there bred

   Where time and outward form would show it dead.

109

O never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seemed my flame to qualify -

As easy might I from myself depart

As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie.

That is my home of love. If I have ranged,

Like him that travels I return again,

Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,

So that myself bring water for my stain.

Never believe, though in my nature reigned

All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,

That it could so preposterously be stained

To leave for nothing all thy sum of good ;

   For nothing this wide universe I call

   Save thou my rose ; in it thou art my all.

110

Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,

Made old offences of affections new.

Most true it is that I have looked on truth

Askance and strangely. But, by all above,

These blenches gave my heart another youth,

And worse essays proved thee my best of love.

Now all is done, have what shall have no end ;

Mine appetite I never more will grind

On newer proof to try an older friend,

A god in love, to whom I am confined.

   Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,

   Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.

Sonnets (Gays) de Shakespeare (2)

81

Or I shall live your epitaph to make,

Or you survive when I in earth am rotten.

From hence your memory death cannot take,

Although in me each part will be forgotten.

Your name from hence immortal life shall have,

Though I, once gone, to all the world must die.

The earth can yield me but a common grave

When you entombèd in men's eyes shall lie.

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,

Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,

And tongues to be your being shall rehearse

When all the breathers of this world are dead.

   You still shall live - such virtue hath my pen -

   Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

82

I grant thou wert not married to my muse,

And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook

The dedicated words which writers use

Of their fair subject, blessing every book.

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,

Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,

And therefore art enforced to seek anew

Some fresher stamp of these time-bettering days.

And do so, love ; yet when they have devised

What strainèd touches rhetoric can lend,

Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathized

In true plain words by thy true-telling friend ;

   And their gross painting might be better used

   Where cheeks need blood : in thee it is abused.

83

I never saw that you did painting need,

And therefore to your fair no painting set.

I found - or thought I found - you did exceed

The barren tender of a poet's debt ;

And therefore have I slept in your report :

That you yourself, being extant, well might show

How far a modern quill doth come too short,

Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.

This silence for my sin you did impute,

Which shall be most my glory, being dumb ;

For I impair not beauty, being mute,

When others would give life, and bring a tomb.

   There lives more life in one of your fair eyes

   Than both your poets can in praise devise.

84

Who is it that says most which can say more

Than this rich praise : that you alone are you,

In whose confine immurèd is the store

Which should example where your equal grew ?

Lean penury within that pen doth dwell

That to his subject lends not some small glory ;

But he that writes of you, if he can tell

That you are you, so dignifies his story.

Let him but copy what in you is writ,

Not making worse what nature made so clear,

And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,

Making his style admirèd everywhere.

   You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,

   Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

85

My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still

While comments of your praise, richly compiled,

Reserve thy character with golden quill

And precious phrase by all the muses filed.

I think good thoughts whilst other write good words,

And like unlettered clerk still cry 'Amen’

To every hymn that able spirit affords

In polished form of well-refinèd pen.

Hearing you praised I say ‘’Tis so, ’tis true,’

And to the most of praise add something more ;

But that is in my thought, whose love to you,

Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before.

   Then others for the breath of words respect,

   Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.

86

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse

Bound for the prize of all-too precious you

That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,

Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew ?

Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write

Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead ?

No, neither he nor his compeers by night

Giving him aid my verse astonishèd.

He nor that affable familiar ghost

Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,

As victors, of my silence cannot boast ;

I was not sick of any fear from thence.

   But when your countenance filled up his line,

   Then lacked I matter ; that enfeebled mine.

87

Farewell - thou art too dear for my possessing,

And like enough thou know'st thy estimate.

The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing ;

My bonds in thee are all determinate.

For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,

And for that riches where is my deserving ?

The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,

And so my patent back again is swerving.

Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then now knowing,

Or me to whom thou gav'st it else mistaking ;

So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,

Comes home again, on better judgement making.

   Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter :

   In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

88

When thou shalt be disposed to set me light

And place my merit in the eye of scorn,

Upon thy side against myself I'll fight,

And prove thee virtuous though thou art forsworn.

With mine own weakness being best acquainted,

Upon thy part I can set down a story

Of faults concealed wherein I am attainted,

That thou in losing me shall win much glory ;

And I by this will be a gainer too ;

For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,

The injuries that to myself I do,

Doing thee vantage, double vantage me.

   Such is my love, to thee I so belong,

   That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.

89

Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,

And I will comment upon that offence ;

Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt,

Against thy reasons making no defence.

Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill,

To set a form upon desirèd change,

As I'll myself disgrace, knowing thy will.

I will acquaintance strangle and look strange,

Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue

Thy sweet belovèd name no more shall dwell,

Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong,

And haply of our old acquaintance tell.

   For thee, against myself I'll vow debate ;

   For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate.

90

Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now,

Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross,

Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,

And do not drop in for an after-loss.

Ah do not, when my heart hath scaped this sorrow,

Come in the rearward of a conquered woe ;

Give not a windy night a rainy morrow

To linger out a purposed overthrow.

If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,

When other petty griefs have done their spite,

But in the onset come ; so shall I taste

At first the very worst of fortune's might,

   And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,

   Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.

Sonnets (Gays) de Shakespeare

1

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty's rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory;

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.

    Pity the world, or else this glutton be:lutton be:

    To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

2

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,

Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,

Will be a tattered weed, of small worth held.

Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,

Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,

To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes

Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use

If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine

Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse',

Proving his beauty by succession thine.

    This were to be new made when thou art old,

    And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

3

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another,

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose uneared womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime;

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

    But if thou live remembered not to be,

    Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

4

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?

Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,

And being frank, she lends to those are free.

Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

The bounteous largess given thee to give?

Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?

For having traffic with thyself alone,

Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.

Then how when nature calls thee to be gone:

What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

    Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,

    Which usèd, lives th'executor to be.

5

Those hours that with gentle work did frame

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell

Will play the tyrants to the very same,

And that unfair which fairly doth excel;

For never-resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter, and confounds him there,

Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o-er-snowed, and bareness everywhere.

Then were not summer's distillation left

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.

    But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,

    Lose but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

6

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface

In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled.

Make sweet some vial, treasure thou some place

With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed.

That use is not forbidden usury

Which happies those that pay the willing loan :

That's for thyself to breed another thee,

Or ten times happier, be it ten for one ;

Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,

If ten of thine ten time refigured thee.

Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,

Leaving thee living in posterity ?

    Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair

    To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

7

Lo, in the orient when the gracious light

Lifts up his burning head, each under eye

Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,

Serving with looks his sacred majesty,

And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,

Resembling strong youth in his middle age,

Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

Attending on his golden pilgrimage.

But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,

Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,

The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are

From his low tract, and look another way.

    So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,

    Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.

8

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?

Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.

Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,

Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds

By unions married do offend thine ear,

They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,

Resembling sire and child and happy mother,

Who all in one one pleasing note do sing;

    Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,

    Sings this to thee: 'Thou single wilt prove none.'

9

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye

That thou consum'st thyself in single life ?

Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,

The world will wail thee like a makeless wife.

The world will be thy widow, and still weep

That thou no form of thee hast left behind,

When every private widow well may keep

By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind.

Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend

Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it ;

But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,

And kept unused, the user so destroys it.

    No love toward others in that bosom sits

    That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.

10

For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any,

Who for thyself art so unprovident.

Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,

But that thou none lov'st is most evident ;

For thou art so possessed with murd'rous hate

That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire,

Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate

Which to repair should be thy chief desire.

O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind !

Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love ?

Be as thy presence is, gracious and kind,

Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove.

    Make thee another self for love of me,

    That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

Chanson de moi-même (Walt Whitman)

Song of Myself

LII

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you. Il dit lui-même qu'il est intraduisible ... car trop "queer" ??? que tu auras du mal à savoir qui je suis ???

Song of myself (Walt Whitman)

Song of Myself

XXIV 

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,

Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,

No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,

No more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors !

Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs !

Whoever degrades another degrades me,

And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index.

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,

By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.

Through me many long dumb voices,

Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,

Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,

Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,

And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,

And of the rights of them the others are down upon,

Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,

Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.

Through me forbidden voices,

Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil,

Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.

I do not press my fingers across my mouth,

I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,

Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from,

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,

This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

If I worship one think more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it,

Translucent mould of me it shall be you !

Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you !

Firm masculine colter it shall be you !

Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you !

You my rich blood ! your milky stream pale strippings of my life !

Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you !

My brain it shall be your occult convolutions !

Root of wash'd sweet-flag ! timorous pond-snipe ! nest of guarded duplicate eggs ! it shall be you !

Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you !

Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you !

Sun so generous it shall be you !

Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you !

You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you !

Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you !

Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you !

Hands I have taken, face I have kiss'd, mortal I have ever touch'd, it shall be you.

I dote on myself, there is a lot of me and all so luscious,

Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy,

I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish,

Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again.

That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be,

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

To behold the day-break !

The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,

The air tastes good to my palate.

Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising freshly exuding,

Scooting obliquely high and low.

Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,

Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.

The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction,

The heav'd challenge from the east that moment over my head,

The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master !

Poem by Swinburne 2

The Garden of Proserpine

by Swinburne

Here, where the world is quiet ;

     Here, where all trouble seems

Dead winds’ and spent waves’ riot

     In doubtful dreams of dreams ;

I watch the green field growing

For reaping folk and sowing,

For harvest-time and mowing,

     A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,

     And men that laugh and weep ;

Of what may come hereafter

     For men that sow to reap :

I am weary of days and hours,

Blown buds of barren flowers,

Desires and dreams and powers

     And everything but sleep.

Here life has death for neighbour,

     And far from eye or ear

Wan waves and wet winds labour,

     Weak ships and spirits steer ;

They drive adrift, and whither

They wot not who make thither ;

But no such winds blow hither,

     And no such things grow here.

No growth of moor or coppice,

      No heather-flower or vine,

But bloomless buds of poppies,

     Green grapes of Proserpine,

Pale beds of blowing rushes

Where no leaf blooms or blushes

Save this whereout she crushes

     For dead men deadly wine.

Pale, without name or number,

     In fruitless fields of corn,

They bow themselves and slumber

     All night till light is born ;

And like a soul belated,

In hell and heaven unmated,

By cloud and mist abated

     Comes out of darkness morn.

Though one were strong as seven,

     He too with death shall dwell,

Nor wake with wings in heaven,

     Nor weep for pains in hell ;

Though one were fair as roses,

His beauty clouds and closes ;

And well though love reposes,

     In the end it is not well.

Pale, beyond porch and portal,

     Crowned with calm leaves, she stands

Who gathers all things mortal

     With cold immortal hands ;

Her languid lips are sweeter

Than love’s who fears to greet her

To men that mix and meet her

     From many times and lands.

She waits for each and other,

     She waits for all men born ;

Forgets the earth her mother,

     The life of fruits and corn ;

And spring and seed and swallow

Take wing for her and follow

Where summer song rings hollow

     And flowers are put to scorn.

There go the loves that wither,

     The old loves with wearier wings ;

And all dead years draw thither,

     And all disastrous things ;

Dead dreams of days forsaken,

Blind buds that snows have shaken,

Wild leaves that winds have taken,

     Red strays of ruined springs.

We are not sure of sorrow,

     And joy was never sure ;

To-day will die to-morrow ;

     Time stoops to no man’s lure ;

And love, grown faint and fretful,

With lips but half regretful

Sighs, and with eyes forgetful

     Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,

     From hope and fear set free,

We thank with brief thanksgiving

     Whatever gods may be

That no life lives for ever ;

That dead men rise up never ;

That even the weariest river

     Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Then star nor sun shall waken,

     Nor any change of light :

Nor sound of waters shaken,

     Nor any sound or sight :

Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,

Nor days nor things diurnal ;

Only the sleep eternal

     In an eternal night.

Swinburne's poem

A Forsaken Garden

by Swinburne

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,

     At the sea-down’s edge between windward and lee,

Walled round with rocks as an inland island,

     The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.

A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses

     The steep square slope of the blossomless bed

Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses

                   Now lie dead.

The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,

     To the low last edge of the long lone land.

If a step should sound or a word be spoken,

     Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest’s hand ?

So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless,

     Through branches and briars if a man make way,

He shall find no life but the sea-wind’s restless

                    Night and day.

The dense hard passage is blind and stifled

     That crawls by a track none turn to climb

To the strait waste place that the years have rifled

     Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.

The thorns he spares when the rose is taken ;

     The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.

The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,

                    These remain.

Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not ;

     As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry ;

From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,

     Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.

Over the meadows that blossom and wither

     Rings but the note of a sea-bird’s song ;

Only the sun and the rain come hither

                    All year long.

The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels

     One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.

Only the wind here hovers and revels

     In a round where life seems barren as death.

Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,

     Haply, of lovers none ever will know,

Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping

                   Years ago.

Heart handfast in heart as they stood, ‘Look thither,’

     Did he whisper ? ‘look forth from the flowers to the sea ;

For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither,

     And men that love lightly may die―but we ?’

And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened,

     And or ever the garden’s last petals were shed,

In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,

                    Love was dead.

Or they loved their life through, and then went whither ?

     And were one to the end―but what end who knows ?

Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither,

     As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.

Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them ?

     What love was ever as deep as a grave ?

They are loveless now as the grass above them

                    Or the wave.

All are at one now, roses and lovers.

     Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.

Not a breath of the time that has been hovers

     In the air now soft with a summer to be.

Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter

     Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,

When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter

                    We shall sleep.

Here death may deal not again for ever ;

     Here change may come not till all change end.

From the graves they have made they shall rise up never,

     Who have left nought living to ravage and rend.

Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing,

     While the sun and the rain live, these shall be ;

Till a last wind’s breath upon all these blowing

                    Roll the sea.

Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,

    Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,

Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble

     The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,

Here now in his triumph where all things falter,

     Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,

As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,

                      Death lies dead.

18 août 2008

Sur le body Art (gay)

Cathy me parle d'une grande figure dans la photographie "gay" de Man Ray (1921) ... sur ma Radio en exclu ici !

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Pour une Culture LGBT

Cathy parle ici de sa passion (entre autres) pour la Culture LGBT :

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