Ma tristesse en toi
S’égaie à ces sons
Qui disent: “Courage!”
Au cœur que l’orage
Emplit des frissons
De quel triste émoi!

“Your voice was deep and low...”

Your voice was deep and low,
But sweet and soft no less,
Like water, as it passes
Over dark mossy grasses,
In velvet somberness
And hushed pianissimo.

Your laughter would break free—
Artless, untrammeled—ring
Sonorous as the sound
When echoing woods resound
To a bird on the wing
Trilling its melody.

That voice, that laughter, come
Back to my memory, where
I see you—living, dead—
And hear the trumpeted
Sounds, like the glorious blare
Of some soul’s martyrdom.

My heart, though sad and aching,
Cheers when it hears those sounds
That say: “Be brave!”; heart filled
With grief, and tempest-chilled;
Heart that the storm confounds
And batters unto breaking.

Orage, ta rage,
Tais-la, que je cause
Avec mon ami
Qui semble endormi,
Mais qui se repose
En un conseil sage...

Storm, calm your agitation;
Let me, in peaceful wise,
Have me a tête-à-tête
With this, my friend, who yet
Appears asleep, but lies
In quiet contemplation...

À Georges Verlaine

Ce livre ira vers toi comme celui d’Ovide
S’en alla vers la Ville.
Il fut chassé de Rome; un coup bien plus perfide
Loin de mon fils m’exile.

Te reverrai-je? Et quel? Mais quoi! moi mort ou non,
Voici mon testament:
Crains Dieu, ne hais personne, et porte bien ton nom
Qui fut porté dûment.

For Georges Verlaine

This book will reach you as, in bygone time,
Ovid’s reached Rome, whence one
Had banished him; an even baser crime
Exiles me from my son.

For you, this legacy, whether I die
Or live, or see you more:
Fear God, hate none, bear well your name that I,
In proper fashion, bore.

from Parallèlement (1889)

[graphic]

Despite a good many diverse works, biographically significant and artistically compelling, that were to stem from his few remaining years of a life divided between hospital and hovel, Parallèlement is generally acknowledged to be Verlaine’s last major collection. Like Jadis et naguère, it is an assemblage of poems past and present, not only placed in a temporal parallelism like those of its predecessor, but also representing the secular current running parallel to the religiosity, in greater or lesser dose, of Sagesse, Amour, and the projected volume Bonheur (Happiness). In his brief preface to the first edition, published by Vanier in 1889, Verlaine, punning on his title, as both title and adverb, alluded succinctly to that intent: “Parallèlement à Sagesse, Amour, et aussi à Bonheur qui va suivre et conclure” (In Parallel to Sagesse, Amour, and also to Bonheur, which will follow and conclude). That being the case, one is not surprised to find here poems of a lusty, earthy, even erotic inspiration: the six Lesbian sonnets originally published in 1867 in Les Amies, and apparently no longer felt too scandalous for public consumption; another half-dozen in a grouping entitled Filles (Girls), praising the corporeal charms of females known and unknown to Verlaine biographers; the seven brief poems of Révérence parler (With All Due Respect), dating from his confinement in Belgium, and taken from the dismantled collection Cellulairement; and the two dozen poems of the cycle Lunes (Moons).

It is the latter, in their variety of forms, meters, and rhyme schemes, that are perhaps the most striking of the volume. In several of them Verlaine expresses the desperate cynicism born of his painful, declining days not in eroticism but in a semi-parodic, semi-nostalgic self-deflating mimicry of the characteristic style of his early work. His frankly erotic vein was, however, far from exhausted. Two collections, Femmes (Women) and Hombres (Men)—the latter’s Spanish title being perhaps an echo of his pseudonym manufactured for Les Amies—were to appear in 1891 and, posthumously, 1903, respectively, privately printed and not for public sale; the first published by Vanier, the second by A. Messein, and both unbridled in their appeal to the prurient.

Allégorie

Un très vieux temple antique s’écroulant
Sur le sommet indécis d’un mont jaune,
Ainsi qu’un roi déchu pleurant son trône,
Se mire, pâle, au tain d’un fleuve lent.

Grâce endormie et regard somnolent,
Une naïade âgée, auprès d’un aulne,
Avec un brin de saule agace un faune,
Qui lui sourit, bucolique et galant.

Sujet naïf et fade qui m’attristes,
Dis, quel poète entre tous les artistes,
Quel ouvrier morose t’opéra,

Tapisserie usée et surannée,
Banale comme un décor d’opéra,
Factice, hélas! comme ma destinée?

Allegory

A mountain summit—yellow, faint: and there,
An ancient temple-ruin through the haze,
Reflected in a stream’s pale, torpid glaze,
Like king dethroned, weeping his lone despair.

Creature of languorous grace and slumberous air,
An aging naiad, by an alder, plays
The tease, twitting, tickling with willow sprays
A smiling satyr—rustic, debonair.

You artless scene, banal cliché; how sad
You make me! Tell me, what dull artist had
The need—what poet dour!—to craft you thus,

You ancient, time-worn, threadbare tapestry,
Décor for some poor opera, spurious,
Counterfeit as my very destiny?

Printemps

Tendre, la jeune femme rousse,
Que tant d’innocence émoustille,
Dit à la blonde jeune fille
Ces mots, tout bas, d’une voix douce:

“Sève qui monte et fleur qui pousse,
Ton enfance est une charmille:
Laisse errer mes doigts dans la mousse
Où le bouton de rose brille,

“Laisse-moi, parmi l’herbe claire,
Boire les gouttes de rosée
Dont la fleur tendre est arrosée,—

“Afin que le plaisir, ma chère,
Illumine ton front candide
Comme l’aube l’azur timide.”

Spring

The woman, young, red-haired of head,
Piqued by the fair and innocent
Blonde maiden, oh so gently bent
Over her and, in whispers, said:

“Blooms yet unplucked, sap yet unspent...
Your childhood is a flower bed:
Let me caress the opulent
Mosses where glows the rosebud red;

“Let me, among the grasses bright,
Sip of the dew that daybreak’s hour
Bestrews about the tender flower—

“So that, dear child, bliss and delight
Illumine that chaste brow for you,
As dawn’s rays the blue heavens do.”

Été

Et l’enfant répondit, pâmée
Sous la fourmillante caresse
De sa pantelante maîtresse:
“Je me meurs, ô ma bien-aimée!

“Je me meurs; ta gorge enflammée
Et lourde me soûle et m’oppresse;
Ta forte chair d’où sort l’ivresse
Est étrangement parfumée;

“Elle a, ta chair, le charme sombre
Des maturités estivales,—
Elle en a l’ambre, elle en a l’ombre;

“Ta voix tonne dans les rafales,
Et ta chevelure sanglante
Fuit brusquement dans la nuit lente.”

Summer

And this, the maiden’s hushed reply,
Tingling beneath the soft caress
Of her hard-breathing satyress:
“O lover mine! I swoon, I die!

“I die! Your bosoms, burning, lie
Heavy as heady wine. Ah yes,
I swoon! Your flesh, your breasts possess
Rare scents my sense is ravished by;

“Your flesh, dark with the ripe perfection
Of many a fragrant summer, glows:
Amber perfume, somber reflection;

Your voice; the lusty tremolos
Of gusty breezes; and your hair,
Blood-red, blows on the slow night air.”

À Mademoiselle ***

Rustique beauté
Qu’on a dans les coins,
Tu sens bon les foins,
La chair et l’été.

Tes trente-deux dents
De jeune animal
Ne vont point trop mal
À tes yeux ardents.

Ton corps dépravant
Sous tes habits courts,
—Retroussés et lourds,
Tes seins en avant,

Tes mollets farauds,
Ton buste tentant,
—Gai, comme impudent,
Ton cul ferme et gros,

Nous boutent au sang
Un feu bête et doux
Qui nous rend tout fous,
Croupe, rein et flanc.

For Mademoiselle ***

Rustic belle, indiscreet,
Dark-corner débauchée,
You smell of new-mown hay,
Of flesh, and summer heat.

Your teeth (all thirty-two)
Like some young beast’s, go well
With flashing eyes that tell
Their passion, as yours do.

Your body, scant bedecked,
Beckoning us to sin;
Breasts bulging in their skin,
Your nipples, taut, erect:

Bewitching bust; your calves,
Shameless; your impudent
Young rump, pert, corpulent,
And firmly plump (both halves);

All pump a sweet, daft fire
Into our veins, exciting
Croup, flank (and such), igniting
Our being with mad desire.