Melancholy

Paul Verlaine

Clair De Lune

Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair, 

Peopled with maskers delicate and dim, 

That play on lutes and dance and have an air 

Of being sad in their fantastic trim. 

The while they celebrate in minor strain 

Triumphant love, effective enterprise, 

They have an air of knowing all is vain,- 

And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise, 

The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone, 

That makes to dream the birds upon the tree, 

And in their polished basins of white stone 

The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy. 

Moonlight 

Your soul is like a painter's landscape where

charming masks in shepherd mummeries

are playing lutes and dancing with an air

of being sad in their fantastic guise.

Even while they sing, all in a minor key, 

of love triumphant and life's careless boon, 

they seem in doubt of their felicity, 

their song melts in the calm light of the moon, 

the lovely melancholy light that sets

the little birds to dreaming in the tree

and among the statues makes the jets

of slender fountains sob with ecstasy.

Green 

See, blossoms, branches, fruit, leaves I have brought,

And then my heart that for you only sighs;

With those white hands of yours, oh, tear it not,

But let the poor gift prosper in your eyes.

The dew upon my hair is still undried,-

The morning wind strikes chilly where it fell.

Suffer my weariness here at your side

To dream the hour that shall it quite dispel.

Allow my head, that rings and echoes still

With your last kiss, to lie upon your breast,

Till it recover from the stormy thrill,-

And let me sleep a little, since you rest. 

Melancholy 

I am the Empire in the last of its decline, 

That sees the tall, fair-haired Barbarians pass,-the while 

Composing indolent acrostics, in a style 

Of gold, with languid sunshine dancing in each line.

The solitary soul is heart-sick with a vile 

Ennui. Down yon, they say, War's torches bloody shine. 

Alas, to be so faint of will, one must resign 

The chance of brave adventure in the splendid file,-

Of death, perchance! Alas, so lagging in desire! 

Ah, all is drunk! Bathyllus, has done laughing, pray? 

Ah, all is drunk,-all eaten! Nothing more to say!

Alone, a vapid verse one tosses in the fire; 

Alone, a somewhat thievish slave neglecting one; 

Alone, a vague disgust of all beneath the sun!