NOVELS WITHOUT WORDS: Paul Verlaine, Arlette forgotten

I BELIEVE, THROUGH A WHISPERING

This is languorous ecstasy,

This is the love fatigue,

This is all the thrills of wood

Among the embrace breezes,

This is, to the gray branches,

The chorus of little voices.

O frail and fresh murmur!

This twitters and whispers,

It looks like the soft cry

The rough grass expires …

You say under water ledge,

The dull roll stones.

This soul laments

Standing in this complaint,

This is ours, is not it?

Mine, say, and yours,

Which exhales the humble antiphon

On this warm evening, so low?

 

HE CRIES IN MY HEART

He cries in my heart

As it rains on the city,

What is this languor

That penetrates my heart?

O sweet sound of rain

Ground and on the roofs!

For a heart bored,

Oh the song of the rain!

He cries for no reason

In this heart sickened.

What! no treason?

This mourning is without reason.

This is the worst pain

Not know why,

Without love and hate,

My heart has so much pain!

 

IT IS NECESSARY, YOU SEE, WE FORGIVE THINGS

It is necessary, you see, we forgive things

In this way we will be happy

And if our life gloomy moments

At least we will be, is not it? two mourners.

Oh we mêlions, we are soulmates,

In our confused wishes childish sweetness

To walk away from women and men,

In fresh forgetting what we exile!

Let two children, let two girls

Loving anything and everything surprised,

Who go pale under the chaste hedges,

Without even knowing that they are forgiven.

 

O SAD, SAD WAS MY SOUL

O sad, sad was my soul

Because, because of a woman.

I am not comforted

Although my heart was is gone.

Although my heart, although my soul

Had fled away from this woman.

I am not comforted,

Although my heart was is gone.

And my heart, my heart too sensitive

Say to my soul: Is it possible,

Is it possible – it was the –

This exile proud, this sad exile?

My soul said to my heart: I know

Myself, we want this trap

To be present long exiles,

Yet that far gone?