19 août 2008

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.

21 juillet 2008

Melancholia (Verlaine)

 

A Ernest Boutier.

 

 

 

 

I Résignation

 

 

 

Tout enfant, j'allais rêvant Ko-Hinnor,

Somptuosité persane et papale,

Héliogabale et Sardanapale!

Mon désir créait sous des toits en or,

Parmi les parfums, au son des musiques,

Des harems sans fin, paradis physiques!

Aujourd'hui, plus calme et non moins ardent,

Mais sachant la vie et qu'il faut qu'on plie,

J'ai dû refréner ma belle folie,

Sans me résigner par trop cependant.

Soit! le grandiose échappe à ma dent,

Mais, fi de l'aimable et fi de la lie!

Et je hais toujours la femme jolie,

La rime assonante et l'ami prudent.