Et quand, solennel, le soir
Des chênes noirs tombera,
Voix de notre désespoir,
Le rossignol chantera.

In Muted Tone

Gently, let us steep our love
In the silence deep, as thus,
Branches arching high above
Twine their shadows over us.

Let us blend our souls as one,
Hearts’ and senses’ ecstasies,
Evergreen, in unison
With the pines’ vague lethargies.

Dim your eyes and, heart at rest,
Freed from all futile endeavor,
Arms crossed on your slumbering breast,
Banish vain desire forever.

Let us yield then, you and I,
To the waftings, calm and sweet,
As their breeze-blown lullaby
Sways the gold grass at your feet.

And, when night begins to fall
From the black oaks, darkening,
In the nightingale’s soft call
Our despair will, solemn, sing.

Colloque sentimental

Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé,
Deux formes ont tout à l’heure passé.

Leurs yeux sont morts et leurs lèvres sont molles,
Et l’on entend à peine leurs paroles.

Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé,
Deux spectres ont évoqué le passé.

—Te souvient-il de notre extase ancienne?
—Pourquoi voulez-vous donc qu’il m’en souvienne?

—Ton cœur bat-il toujours à mon seul nom?
Toujours vois-tu mon âme en rêve?—Non.

—Ah! les beaux jours de bonheur indicible
Où nous joignions nos bouches!—C’est possible.

—Qu’il était bleu, le ciel, et grand, l’espoir!
—L’espoir a fui, vaincu, vers le ciel noir.

Tels ils marchaient dans les avoines folles,
Et la nuit seule entendit leurs paroles.

Lovers’ Chat

In the drear park, beneath a chill, bleak sky,
Two shapes, two silhouettes come passing by.

Lifeless their eyes, formless their lips; and they
Speak low, and muffled are the words they say.

In the drear park, beneath a chill, bleak sky,
Two phantom figures talk of days gone by.

“Do you remember how our souls would ache
With bliss?” “Why ask? What difference does it make?”

“Do I still haunt your dreams, like long ago?
Does my mere name still make your heart pound?” “No.”

“Oh, for those wondrous days, the ecstasy,
Kiss upon kiss, pressed lips to lips!” “Maybe.”

“How high our hopes, how blue the sky, outspread!”
“Dark now the sky, and, humbled, hope has fled!”

Treading the weeds, they talked the time away,
And night alone heard what they had to say.

from La Bonne Chanson (1870)

[graphic]

Shortly before the publication of Fêtes galantes, Verlaine, continuing his worldly and artistic frequentations, had become a habitué of the prominent salon of the aristocratic social butterfly Nina de Villard, lover of Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, among others, and had come to know the musician Charles de Sivry. He and the latter soon became fast friends, and it was Sivry who introduced him to his half sister Mathilde Mauté, prim sixteen-year-old of a conventional bourgeois family (despite a fanciful “de Fleurville” tacked onto the surname).

Perhaps to defuse the urgings toward marriage and stability, proddings of his mother and other relatives concerned about Verlaine’s already scandalous bouts with alcohol; perhaps to convince himself of a heterosexuality that a deep affection for Lucien Viotti, a colleague at the Lycée Bonaparte, had called into question; or perhaps, even, in complete sincerity (at least for the moment), the poet impulsively asked for Mathilde’s hand in marriage. Rather to his surprise, his proposal was accepted, though not without hesitation on the part of the family, and the marriage took place in June of 1870.

The Mautés’ misgivings were soon to prove only too well founded.

The poems of La Bonne Chanson, twenty-one in all, are the idealized fruit of Verlaine’s very formal and proper yearlong courtship. Published in 1870, again by Lemerre, the collection was not released until some two years later, at the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War. Short pieces, for the most part, like their predecessors, they represent an important turning point in his art, in that the Parnassian element, superficial though it was in Fêtes galantes, is almost wholly absent, giving way to the rather conventional and (with only a few exceptions) somewhat forced effusions of the poet, happy to feel, or to convince himself that he felt, the joys and pangs of romantic love, and the anticipated pleasure of a settled middle-class married life, contrary to his still vague “saturnine” urges. That married life, however, despite the birth of a son, began to disintegrate almost as soon as it had begun.

“Avant que tu ne t’en ailles...”

Avant que tu ne t’en ailles,
Pâle étoile du matin,
—Mille cailles
Chantent, chantent dans le thym.—

Tourne devers le poète,
Dont les yeux sont pleins d’amour,
—L’alouette
Monte au ciel avec le jour.—

Tourne ton regard que noie
L’aurore dans son azur;
—Quelle joie
Parmi les champs de blé mûr!—

Puis fais luire ma pensée
Là-bas,—bien loin, oh! bien loin!
—La rosée
Gaîment brille sur le foin.—

Dans le doux rêve où s’agite
Ma mie endormie encor...
—Vite, vite,
Car voici le soleil d’or.—

“Morning star, before you pale...”

Morning star, before you pale
With the sunrise, daybreak bringing,
—Myriad quail,
In the thyme, are singing, singing.—

Gaze upon this poet, mark
Well his love-abounding eyes.
—Look! The lark
Rises in the morning skies.—

Gaze on him before your sight
Dims, in azure’s dawning drowned;
—What delight:
Fields of lush, ripe grain, all round!—

Then make thoughts of me shine through,
Far, there—oh so far away,
—Bright, the dew
Gaily glistens on the hay.—

Into my love’s reveries,
Restless as she lies, still sleeping...
—Quickly, please!
See? The golden sun comes peeping!—

“La lune blanche...”

La lune blanche
Luit dans les bois;
De chaque branche
Part une voix
Sous la ramée...

Ô bien-aimée.

L’étang reflète,
Profond miroir,
La silhouette
Du saule noir
Où le vent pleure...

Rêvons, c’est l’heure.

Un vaste et tendre
Apaisement
Semble descendre
Du firmament
Que l’astre irise...