Clair de Lune (poem)

Clair de Lune is a French poem written by Paul Verlaine in 1869. It is the inspiration for the third and most famous movement of Debussy's 1890 Suite bergamasque of the same name; Debussy also made two settings of the poem for voice and piano accompaniment. The poem has also been set to music by Gabriel Fauré and Jozef Szulc.

Text

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.[1]

English Translation

Your soul is a well-chosen landscape
Where roam charming masks and bergamasques
Playing the lute and dancing and seeming almost
Sad under their whimsical disguises.

While singing in a minor key
Of victorious love and good life
They don't seem to believe in their own happiness
And their song mingles with the moonlight,

With the sad and beautiful moonlight,
That makes the birds in the trees dream
And sob with ecstasy the water streams,
The great slim water streams among the marbles.

References

  1. ↑ "Excerpt, One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine". www.press.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2017-07-08.
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