Poem: “The Scene Behind The Carriage Window-Panes” by Paul Verlaine

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French Literature – French Poetry – Paul Verlaine – Poems by Paul Verlaine
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Il Pleut Doucement Sur La Ville. > > >

The Scene Behind The Carriage Window-Panes

The scene behind the carriage window-panes
Goes flitting past in furious flight; whole plains
With streams and harvest-fields and trees and blue
Are swallowed by the whirlpool, whereinto
The telegraph’s slim pillars topple o’er,
Whose wires look strangely like a music-score.

A smell of smoke and steam, a horrid din
As of a thousand clanking chains that pin
A thousand giants that are whipped and howl,—
And, suddenly, long hoots as of an owl.

What is it all to me? Since in mine eyes
The vision lingers that beatifies,
Since still the soft voice murmurs in mine ear,
And since the Name, so sweet, so high, so dear,
Pure pivot of this madding whirl, prevails
Above the brutal clangor of the rails?
THE ROSY HEARTH, THE LAMPLIGHT’S NARROW BEAM

The rosy hearth, the lamplight’s narrow beam,
The meditation that is rather dream,
With looks that lose themselves in cherished looks;
The hour of steaming tea and banished books;
The sweetness of the evening at an end,
The dear fatigue, and right to rest attained,
And worshipped expectation of the night,—
Oh, all these things, in unrelenting flight,
My dream pursues through all the vain delays,
Impatient of the weeks, mad at the days!
IT SHALL BE, THEN, UPON A SUMMER’S DAY

It shall be, then, upon a summer’s day:
The sun, my joy’s accomplice, bright shall shine,
And add, amid your silk and satin fine,
To your dear radiance still another ray;

The heavens, like a sumptuous canopy,
Shall shake out their blue folds to droop and trail
About our happy brows, that shall be pale
With so much gladness, such expectancy;

And when day closes, soft shall be the air
That in your snowy veils, caressing, plays,
And with soft-smiling eyes the stars shall gaze
Benignantly upon the wedded pair.
Romances sans Paroles

Translated by Gertrude Hall

< < < Before Your Light Quite Fail
Il Pleut Doucement Sur La Ville > > >

French Literature – French Poetry – Paul Verlaine – Poems by Paul Verlaine

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The Scene Behind The Carriage Window-Panes

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