Short Poems

Once again a year is gone
O Thou Rock, Eternity!
All my ardent longing
Goes far beyond this life
Towards my true fatherland,
For I'm a stranger here below.

Amour vous a (des le jour, que fus né)
De mon service ordinaire estrenée:
Et si ne fus de vous oncq estrené
Que de rigueur soubs parolle obstinée:
Si vous supply, noble Nymphe Renée,
Ce nouvel an parler nouveau langage,
Et tout ainsi, qu'on voyt changer d'année,
Vouloir changer envers moy de courage.

Babette, when I have naught to do
I love to sit and hear you coo;
But when I'm occupied—as now—
A most distracting cherub thou.

Nay, we are loads for them to lift,
And straws to show their current's drift,
And we are riddles they must sift,
Even riddles they must read.
And we are signs of their unthrift—
Ay—signs of tasks that they have left.
They shall be shriven with this shrift:
“Go make their need your need.”

There is a desert of despair,
Where never seed was sown;
There is a wilderness called night,
Wherein I lie alone,
And there my voice goes crying forth.
O were a sound a star!
My cry is all there is of light
In a land where no lamps are.

Dans le ciel l'étoile dorée
Ne luit que par l'ombre du soir;
Ta robe, de rose éclairée,
Change l'étoile en astre noir!

Moððe word fræt. Me þæt þuhte
wrætlicu wyrd, þa ic þæt wundor gefrægn,
þæt se wyrm forswealg wera gied sumes,
þeof in þystro, þrymfæstne cwide
ond þæs strangan staþol. Stælgiest ne wæs
wihte þy gleawra, þe he þam wordum swealg.

Let it no longer be a forlorn hope
To wash an Ethiope;
He's washed, his gloomy skin a peaceful shade
For his white soul is made,
And now, I doubt not, the Eternal Dove
A black-faced house will love.

Roi: l'homme qui un instant
s'arrête sous une couronne,
toit qui attire la foudre.

. . . .Quelque lenteur qui traversait le jour:
on aurait dit l'enterrement des rêves.