No More Learning

But to walk straight, Muse,

Maintain,

Tight-fitting tragic shoes.

Shame on the idle rhythm,

A size or more too large,

All don

Sliding it off and on!

Sculptor, forever shun

Clay moulded there

By the thumb

When the mind's elsewhere;

Wrestle with Carrara,

With Parian marble rare

And hard,

Keep the outline clear;

From Syracuse borrow

Bronze which the proud

Furrow

Has charmingly endowed;

With a delicate hand,

The vein of agate, follow

Command

The profile of Apollo.

Fix the water-colour,

Too fragile tints that run,

Painter

In enameller's oven;

Make Sirens blue

Tails writhing free

For you,

Monsters of heraldry;

And with triple halo

The Virgin and her Jesus

the globe

With the Cross above.

All dies. - Only robust

Art shares eternity:

The bust

Shall outlive the city;

And the austere medal

Found by a labourer

Recall

From earth, an Emperor.

Even the gods pass.

But stronger again

Than brass

Sovereign lines remain.

Chisel, file, and ream

That you may lock

Vague dream

In the resistant block!

Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894)

Leconte de Lisle

'Leconte de Lisle'
Library of the World's best Literature, Ancient and Modern (p579, 1896) Internet Book Archive Images

The Jaguar's Dream

Beneath the dark mahoganies, creepers in flower

Hang in the heavy, motionless, fly-filled air,

Twining among the tree-stumps, falling where,

They cradle the brilliant parrot, the quarreller,

The wild monkeys, spiders with yellow hair.

There the wearied, ominous horse-killer,

The ox-slayer, returns with a steady tread,

Over the dead mossy trunks of old timber.

Stretching, arching his muscular loins, a breath

From his gaping muzzle heavy with thirst

Issues with a sudden shock, quick and harsh,

And great lizards warm from the noon heat stir,

Then vanish gleaming through the tawny grass.

Veiled from the sun in a hollow of the forest,

He sinks down; stretched out on a level stone,

Cleans his paw with a broad lick of his tongue

Blinks golden eyes dull with sleepiness;

And, as his inert forces, in imagination

Make his tail flicker and his flanks quiver,

Dreams himself deep in some green plantation,

Leaping, and plunging dripping claws forever

Into bullocks' flesh as they bellow and shiver.

Stephane Mallarme (1844-1896)

Stephane Mallarme

'Stephane Mallarme'
Paul Gauguin, 1891, The Rijksmuseum

Sigh

My soul towards your brow, where, O calm sister,

An autumn dreams blotched by reddish smudges,

And towards the errant sky of your angelic eye

Climbs: as in a melancholy garden the true sigh

Of a white jet of water towards the Azure!

- To the Azure that October stirred, pale, pure,

That in the vast pools mirrors infinite languor,

And over dead water where the leaves wander

The wind, in russet throes dig their cold furrow,

Allows a long ray of yellow light to flow.
O so dear

O so dear from far and near and white all

So deliciously you, Mery, that I dream

Of what impossibly flows, of some rare balm

Over some flower-vase of darkened crystal.

Do you know it, yes! For me, for years, here,

Forever, your dazzling smile prolongs

The one rose with its perfect summer gone

Into times past, yet then on into the future.

My heart that sometimes at night tries to know itself,

Or with which last word to name you the most tender

Exults in that which merely whispered sister

Were it not, such short tresses so great a treasure,

That you teach me quite another sweetness,

Soft through the kiss murmured only in your hair.

Note: Dated 1895. The French text reads 'Mary', this being one of a series of poems written for Mery Laurent, a friend also of Manet and others.

Sonnet

(Mery, sans trop d'aurore. . . )

Mery,

Without dawn too grossly now inflaming

The rose, that splendid, natural and weary

Sheds even her heavy veil of perfumes to hear

Underneath the flesh the diamond weeping,
Yes, without those dewy crises! And gently,

Unbroken when the sky fills with storm,

Jealous to add who knows what spaces

To simple day the day so true in feeling,

Does it not seem, Mery, that each year,

Where spontaneous grace relights your brow,

Suffices, given so much wonder and for me,

Like a lone fan with which a room's surprised,

To refresh with as little pain as is needed here

All our inborn and unvarying friendship.


Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

Paul Verlaine

'Paul Verlaine'
Library of the World's best Literature, Ancient and Modern (p248, 1896) Internet Book Archive Images

The piano kissed. . .

Joyous notes, a sounding harpsichord's intrusion.

Petrus Borel

The piano kissed by a delicate hand

Gleams distantly in rose-grey evening

While with a wingtips' weightless sound

A fine old tune, so fragile, charming

Roams discreetly, almost trembling,

Through the chamber She's long perfumed.