![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Justin's Favorite Poems & Excerpts
Et dès lors, je me suis baigné dans le Poème
De la Mer, infusé d'astres, et lactescent,
Dévorant les azurs verts ; où, flottaison blême
Et ravie, un noyé pensif parfois descend
- Rimbaud, "Le Bateau Ivre" (excerpt)
Then I bathed in the Poem of the Sea,
Infused with stars, the milk-white spume blends,
Grazing green azures: where ravished, bleached
Flotsam, a drowned man in dream descends.
- Rimbaud, "The Drunken Boat" (translation)
♛
C'est que la voix des mers folles, immense râle,
Brisait ton sein d'enfant, trop humain et trop doux ;
C'est qu'un matin d'avril, un beau cavalier pâle,
Un pauvre fou, s'assit muet à tes genoux !
- Rimbaud, "Ophélie" (excerpt)
It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,
That shattered your child's heart, too human and too soft;
It was a handsome pale knight, a poor madman
Who one April morning sate mute at your knees!
- Rimbaud, "Ophelia" (translation)
♛
It is a repose in the light, neither fever nor langour, on the bed or on the meadow.
It is the friend neither violent nor weak. The friend.
It is the beloved neither tormenting nor tormented. The beloved.
Air and the world not sought. Life.
- Was it really this?
- And the dream grew cold.
- Rimbaud, "Vigils I"
♛
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
- Robert Frost, "The Oven Bird"
♛
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (excerpt)
♛
I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.
- Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors (excerpt)
♛
Eternity points, in its amaranth bower
Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet prospect lour,
Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,
When woe fades away like the mist of the heath.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Bereavement" (excerpt)
This excerpt makes Justin think of Euphie.
♛
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
- Lord Byron, "She walks in beauty"
This poem was chosen specifically for Shilo.
De la Mer, infusé d'astres, et lactescent,
Dévorant les azurs verts ; où, flottaison blême
Et ravie, un noyé pensif parfois descend
- Rimbaud, "Le Bateau Ivre" (excerpt)
Then I bathed in the Poem of the Sea,
Infused with stars, the milk-white spume blends,
Grazing green azures: where ravished, bleached
Flotsam, a drowned man in dream descends.
- Rimbaud, "The Drunken Boat" (translation)
♛
C'est que la voix des mers folles, immense râle,
Brisait ton sein d'enfant, trop humain et trop doux ;
C'est qu'un matin d'avril, un beau cavalier pâle,
Un pauvre fou, s'assit muet à tes genoux !
- Rimbaud, "Ophélie" (excerpt)
It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,
That shattered your child's heart, too human and too soft;
It was a handsome pale knight, a poor madman
Who one April morning sate mute at your knees!
- Rimbaud, "Ophelia" (translation)
♛
It is a repose in the light, neither fever nor langour, on the bed or on the meadow.
It is the friend neither violent nor weak. The friend.
It is the beloved neither tormenting nor tormented. The beloved.
Air and the world not sought. Life.
- Was it really this?
- And the dream grew cold.
- Rimbaud, "Vigils I"
♛
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
- Robert Frost, "The Oven Bird"
♛
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (excerpt)
♛
I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.
- Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors (excerpt)
♛
Eternity points, in its amaranth bower
Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet prospect lour,
Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,
When woe fades away like the mist of the heath.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Bereavement" (excerpt)
This excerpt makes Justin think of Euphie.
♛
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
- Lord Byron, "She walks in beauty"
This poem was chosen specifically for Shilo.