Not falsely to
constrain!
19th Century French Poetry
Sonnet
To see each other truly, to love each other only,
Without deceit, diversion, without shame or lies,
With no desire eluding us, never remorsefully,
To live as one, give the heart to every moment's flight;
To respect all thought as deeply as one plunges in,
To make of love the light of day and not a dream,
And in that clarity breathe freely forever -
So Laure sighed and sang to her lover.
You whose every step touches grace supreme,
It's you, among the flowers who seem carefree:
That is how one should love, you said to me.
And it is I, old child of doubt and blasphemy,
Who listening, and thinking, make you this reply:
Yes, it's thus one loves, though one lives otherwise.
Theophile Gautier (1811-1872)
Theophile Gautier
'Theophile Gautier'
Felix Henri Bracquemond, 1833 - 1914, The New York Public Library: Digital Collections
Sonnet
To vein her brow's pallor, delicate,
Japan has granted its clearest blue;
The white porcelain is of white less true
Than her lucent neck, her temples of agate;
In her moist eye gleams a gentle light;
The nightingale's voice is harsher yet,
And, when she rises in our dark night,
We praise the moon in a cloudy dress;
Her silver eyes, burnished, move fluidly;
Caprice has pointed her pert little nose;
Her mouth has the red of raspberry, peach;
Her movements flow with a Chinese flow,
And beside her one breathes from her beauty
Something sweet, like the fragrance of tea.
The Hippopotamus
The big-bellied hippopotamus
Inhabits the jungles of Java,
Where in the depths of each lair, cuss
More monsters than haunt the dreamer.
The boa uncoils and hisses,
The tiger gives out its roars,
The angry buffalo whistles;
He grazes at peace or snores.
He fears nor kris nor assegai,
He gazes at man, with no cares at all,
And smiles at the sepoy's musket-ball,
That merely rebounds from his hide.
I'm like the hippopotamus;
Clothed with my convictions' weight,
Strong armour none can penetrate,
I tread, secure, the wilderness.
Carmen
Carmen is lean - a trace of yellow
Shadows her gipsy eye.
Her hair is a sinister black,
Her skin, tanned by the devil.
Women claim she's ugly,
But for her the men go mad:
The Archbishop of Toledo
Kneels at her feet to say Mass;
For above her amber nape
Is coiled a large chignon
That, in her room, undone
Yields her body a cape.
And gleams, through the pallor,
A mouth with a conquering smile;
Red chilli, a scarlet flower,
Hearts'-blood gives it fire.
So formed, the swarthy one
Outdoes nobler beauty,
And with her eyes that burn
Revives satiety.
She has, in her hot ugliness,
A salt-grain of that sea
From whose bitter gulf acrid Venus
Rose naked, provocatively.
Art
Yes, finer work emerges
From form that resists,
Our urges,
Marble, verse, onyx.
Not falsely to constrain!
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.
