Claire de Lune - Paul Verlaine

Claire de Lune

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

Moonlight (translation by Norman R. Shapiro)

Your soul is like a landscape fantasy

Where masks and Bergamasks, in charming wise,

Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be

Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise.

Singing in minor mode of life's largesse

And all victorious love, they yet seem quite

Reluctant to believe their happiness,

And their song mingles with the pale moonlight,

The calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty, beaming,

Sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees,

And makes the marbles fountains, gushing, streaming -

Slender, jet-fountains - sob their ecstasies.

White

She wore white
Hoping to preserve her innocence
Like a peach canned in a jar
Imbuing the room with its wild aroma upon unscrewing
She wore red
Tearing through life
Wanting to be noticed
If only for an instant
She wore blue
On those days when the rain is relentless
And the drip drip sound
Echoes the emptiness of her heart
She wore the colors of life in all their splendor and variety
She wore life itself grafted to her skin
And with each breath
She came closer to her death



(This poem of an unknown poet was published in the Greek magazine "Μοτέρ", issue 15. It's one of a kind, so I thought it would be fantastic to share it with you. Hope you like it!)

I Died for Beauty - Emily Dickinson

I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth,--the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

Invocation - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
'Tis since thou art fled away.

How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain.
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not.

As a lizard with the shade
Of a trembling leaf,
Thou with sorrow art dismayed;
Even the sighs of grief
Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt not hear.

Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure;
Thou wilt never come for pity,
Thou wilt come for pleasure; -
Pity then will cut away
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.

I love snow and all the forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost
Which is Nature's, and may be
Untainted by man's misery.

I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good: -
Between thee and me
What difference? but thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less.

I love Love -though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee -
Thou art love and life! O come!
Make once more my heart thy home!

Catherine & Heathcliff

Catherine announcing to Nelly her marriage to Linton

"I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods; time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."

Catherine after her marriage with Linton during her illness

"'Look!" she cried eagerly, "that's my room with the candle in it, and the trees swaying before it: and the other candle is in Joseph's garret. Joseph sits up late, doesn't he? He's waiting till I come home that he may lock the gate. Well, he'll wait a while yet. It's a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk, to go that journey! We've braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are with me. I never will!"

Quarrel between Heathcliff and Catherine in Catherine's deathbed

"You teach me now how cruel you've been-cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray you own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you-they'll damn you. You loved me-then what right had you to leave me? What right-answer me-for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart-you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you-oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?"
"Let me alone. Let me alone," sobbed Catherine. "If I have done wrong, I'm dying for it. It is enough! You left me too: but I won't upbraid you! I forgive you. Forgive me!"
"It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands," he answered. "Kiss me again; and don't let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer-but yours! How can I?"

Heathcliff's reaction when he learns about Catherine's death

"May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there-not in heaven-not perished-where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer-I repeat it till my tongue stiffens-Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you-haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth, Be with me always-take any form-drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"
He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast getting goaded to death with knives and spears. I observed several splashes of blood about the bark of the tree, and his hand and forehead were both stained; probably the scene I witnessed was a repetition of others acted during the night.

Heathcliff one step before his death, one step closer to his Catherine

"Then you are not afraid of death?" I pursued.
"Afraid? No!" he replied. "I have neither a fear, nor a presentiment, nor a hope of death. Why should I? With my hard constitution and temperate mode of living, and unperilous occupations there is scarcely a black hair on my head. And yet I cannot continue in this condition! I have to remind myself to breathe-almost to remind my heart to beat! And it is like bending back a stiff spring: it is by compulsion that I do the slightest act not prompted by one thought; and by compulsion that I notice anything alive or dead, which is not associated with one universal idea. I have a single wish, and my whole being and faculties are yearning to attain it. They have yearned towards it so long, and so unwaveringly, that I'm convinved it will be reached-and soon-because it has devoured my existence: I am swallowed up in the anticipation of its fulfilment. My confessions have not relieved me; but they may account for some otherwise unaccountable phases of humour which I show. O God! It is a long fight; I wish it were over!

These excerpts were taken from Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, one of my favourite novels and one that is purely Gothic. Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff loved each other with a strange but deep love, a love beyond time and space. And there is nothing more sublime that this...

My death waits there... a New Year's Sublime Present

My death waits like an old roué
so confident I'll go his way
whistle to him and the passing time...
My death waits like a Bible truth
at the funeral of my youth
weep loud for that -
and the passing time...
My death waits like
a witch at night
as surely as our love is bright
let's not think about the passing time

But whatever lies behind the door
there is nothing much to do...
angel or devil, I don't care
for in front of that door...
there is you.

My death waits like a beggar blind
who sees the world through an unlit mind
throw him a dime
for the passing time...
My death waits there between your thighs
your cool fingers will close my eyes
let's think of that and the passing time.
My death waits to allow my friends
a few good times before it ends
so let's drink to that and the passing time

But what ever lies behind the door,
there is nothing much to do
angel or devil I don't care
for in front of that door... there is you

My death waits there among the leaves
in magicians mysterious sleeves
rabbits and dogs and the passing time.
My death waits there among the flowers
where the blackest shadow, blackest shadow cowers
let's pick lilacs for the passing time.
My death waits there, in a double bed
sails of oblivion at my head
so pull up the sheets
against the passing time

But whatever lies behind the door
there is nothing much to do
angel or devil... I don't care
for in front of that door
there is...

(I love this song! It's sooo much David Bowie! This man is more than a singer... amazing!I dedicate it with all my love to all of you the sublime sweethearts, wishing you to find your 'death' out there this year! Make most of this year and don't forget to laugh, not just smile! Love, Melian)