Ode to the West Wind

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-striken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until 

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destryer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

II

Percy Bysshe SHELLEY (1792-1822) Ode to the West  Wind

City Dusk

Come out... out

To this inevitable night of mine

Oh you dinker of new wine,
Here's pageantry... Here's carnival,
Rich dusk, dim streets and all
The whisperings of city night...

I have closed my book of fading harmonies,
( The shadows fell across me in the park)
And my soul was sad with violins and trees,
And I was sick for dark,
When suddenly it hastened by me, bringing
Thousands of lights,a haunting breeze,
And a night of streets and singing...

I shall know you by your eager feet
and by your pale, pale hair;
I'll whisper happy incoherent things
While I'm waiting for you there...

All the faces unforgettable in dusk
Will blend to yours,
And the footsteps like a thousand overtures
Will blend to yours,
And there will be more drunkenness than wine
In the softness of your eyes on mine...

Faint violins where lovely ladies dine,
The brushing of skirts, the voices of the night
And all the lure of friendly eyes... Ah there
We"ll drift like summer sounds upon the summer air...

Francis Scott Fitzgerald  (Thousand-and-First Ship)

Crows

Lord, when the open field is cold,

When in the battered villages

The endless angelus dies-

Above the dark and drooping world

Let the empty skies disclose

Your dear, delightful crows.

Armada dark with harsh cries,

Your nests are tossed by icy winds!

Along the banks of yellowed ponds,

On roads where crumbling crosses rise,

In cold and gray and mournful weather

Scatter, hover, dive together!

In flocks above the fields of France

Where yesterday's dead men lie,

Wheel across the winter sky;

Recall our black inheritance!

Let dutyin your cry be heard,

Mournful, black, uneasy bird.

Yet in that oak, you saints of god,

Swaying in the dying day,

Leave the whstling birds of May

For those who found, within that wood

From which they will not come again,

That every victory is vain.

Arthur Rimbaud (translated by PAUL SCHIMDT)

Le Pont Mirabeau

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Et nos amours

Faut-il ou'il m'en souvienne

La joie venait toujours après la peine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face

Tandis que sous

Le pont de nos bras passe

Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante

L'amour s'en va

Comme la vie est lente

Et comme l'Espérance est violente

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Passent les jours passent les semaines 

Ni temps passé

Ni les amours reviennent

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Guillaume Apollinaire (Alcools NRF Gallimard)

Obit on Parnassus

Death before forty's no bar. Lo!

These had accomplished their feats:

Chatterton, Burns, and Kit Marlowe,

Byron and Chelley and Keats.

Death, the eventual sensor,

Lays for the forties, and so

Tookoff Jane Austen and Spenser,

Stevenson, Hood, and poor Poe.


You'll leave a better-lined wallet
By reaching the end of your rope
After fifty, like Shakespeare and Smollett,
Thackeray, Dickens, and Pope.


Try for the sixties--but say, boy,
that's when the tombstones were built on
Butler and Sheridan, the play boy
Arnold and Coleridge and Milton.


Three score ant ten--the tides rippling
Over the bar; slip the hawser.
Godspeed to Clemens and Kipling,
Swinburne and Browning and Chaucer.


Some stave the debt off but paid it
At eighty--that's after law.
Wordsworth and Tennyson made it,
And Meredith, Hardy, and Shaw.


But, Death, while you make up your quota,
Please note this confession of candor--
That I wouldn't give an iota
To linger ninety, like Landor.


Francis Scott Fitzgerald  (Thousand-and-First Ship)

SPLEEN

Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle

Sur l'esprit gémissant en proie aux longs ennuis,

Et que de l'horizon embrassant tout le cercle

Il nous verse un jour noir plus triste que les nuits;

Quand la terre est changée en un cachot humide,

Où l'Espérance, comme une chauve-souris,

S'en va battant les murs de son aile timide

Et se cognant la tête à des plafonds pourris;

Quand la pluie étalant ses immenses traînées
D'une vaste prison imite les barreaux,
Et qu'un peuple muet d'infâmes araignées
Vient tendre ses filets au fond de nos cerveaux,
Des cloches tout à coup sautent avec furie
Et lancent vers le ciel un affreux hurlement,
Ainsi que des esprits errants et sans patrie
Qui se mettent à geindre opiniâtrement.

-Et de longs corbillards, sans tambours ni musique,
Défilent lentement dans mon âme; l'Espoir,
Vaincu, pleure, et l'Angoisse atroce, despotique,
Sur mon crâne incliné plante son drapeau noir.

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
Anthologie de la poésie française (Larousse)

A Divine Image

Cruelty has a Human Heart.

And Jealousy Human Face;

Terror the Human Form Divine,

And Secrecy the Human Dress.

The Human Dress is forged Iron

The Human Form a fiery Forge,

The Human Face a Furnace seal'd,

The Human Heart its hungry Gorge.

William Blake (Les chants de l'Expérience Arfuyen)