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Virgilia d'Edwin Markham
C'est en anglais je sais..... c'est un poeme que j'adore .... juste pour le partage
Had we two gone down the world together,
I had made fair ways for the feet of Song,
And the world's fang been but a foam-soft feather,
The world that works us wrong.
If you had but stayed when the old sweet wonder
Was a precious pain in my pulsing side!
Ah, why did you hurry our lives asunder —
You, born to be my bride?
What sent it upon me—my soul importunes—
All the grief of the world in a little span,
All the tears and fears, all the fates and fortunes,
That the heart holds for a man?
Is this then the grief that the first gods kneaded
Into all joy that the strange world brings?
Did the tears fall into the heap unheeded,
These tears in mortal things?
But why it was that the whole world wasted,
This you will know when they count the tears,
After the dust of the grave is tasted,
After this noise of years.
Yet some things stay though a world lies broken,
I keep some things that were dear of old—
That first kiss spared and that last word spoken
And the glint of your hair's dark gold.
Do you mind that hour in the soft sweet morning
When I held you fast in divine alarms,
When my soul stood up like a god adorning
His body with bright arms?
Forget it not till the crowns are crumbled
And the swords of the kings are rent with rust—
Forget it not till the hills lie humbled,
And the springs of the seas run dust.
II
What was I back in the world's first wonder? —
An elf-child found on an ocean-reef,
A sea-child nursed by the surge and thunder,
And marked for the lyric grief.
I mind me well how the waves' edge whitened
As the shapes of the storm went whirling by—
How I laughed and ran when the loud void lightened,
And tempest shook the sky.
So I will go down by the way of the willows,
And whisper it out to the mother Sea,
To the soft sweet shores and the long bright billows,
The dream that cannot be.
There will be help for the soul's great trouble
Where the sea's heart sings to the listening ear,
Where the high gray cliff in the pool hangs double,
And the moon is misting the mere.
'Twas down in the sea that your soul took fashion,
O strange Love born of the white sea-wave!
And only the sea and her lyric passion
Can ease the wound you gave.
I will go down to the wide wild places,
Where the calm cliffs look on the shores around;
I will rest in the power of their great grave faces
And the gray hush of the ground.
On a cliff's high head a gray gull clamors,
But down at the base is the Devil's brew,
And the swing of arms and the heave of hammers,
And the white flood roaring through.
There on the cliff is the sea-bird's tavern,
And there with the wild things I'll find a home,
Laugh with the lightning, shout with the cavern,
Run with the feathering foam.
I will climb down where the nests are hanging,
And the young birds scream to the swinging deep,
Where the rocks and the iron winds are clanging,
And the long waves lift and leap.
I will thread the shores to the cavern hollows,
Where the edge of the wave runs white and thin;
I will sing to the surge and the foam that follows
When the dark tides thunder in.
I will go out where the sea-birds travel,
And mix my soul with the wind and sea ;
Let the green waves weave and the gray rains ravel,
And the tides go over me.
The Sea is the mother of songs and sorrows,
And out of her wonder our wild loves come;
And so it will be through the long to-morrows,
Till all our lips are dumb.
She knows all sighs and she knows all sinning,
And they whisper out in her breaking wave:
She has known it all since the far beginning,
Since the grief of that first grave.
She shakes the heart with her stars and thunder
And her soft low word when the winds are late;
For the sea is Woman, the sea is Wonder —
Her other name is Fate!
There is daring and dream in her billows breaking —
In the power of her beauty our griefs forget:
She can ease the heart of the long, long aching,
And bury old regret.
III
Will you find rest as our ways dissever?
Will the gladness grow as the days increase?
Howbeit, I leave on your soul forever
The word of the eternal peace.
I will go the road and my song shall save me,
Though grief may stay as the heart's old guest:
I will finish the work that the strange God gave me,
And then pass on to rest.
I will go back to the great world-sorrow,
To the millions bearing the double load —
The fate of to-day and the fear of tomorrow:
I will taste the dust of the road.
I will go back to the pains and the pities
That break the heart of the world with moan;
I will forget in the grief of the cities
The burden of my own.
There in the world-grief my own grief humbles,
My wild hour melts in the days to be,
As the wild white foam of a river crumbles,
Forgotten in the sea.
Had we two gone down the world together,
I had made fair ways for the feet of Song,
And the world's fang been but a foam-soft feather,
The world that works us wrong.
If you had but stayed when the old sweet wonder
Was a precious pain in my pulsing side!
Ah, why did you hurry our lives asunder —
You, born to be my bride?
What sent it upon me—my soul importunes—
All the grief of the world in a little span,
All the tears and fears, all the fates and fortunes,
That the heart holds for a man?
Is this then the grief that the first gods kneaded
Into all joy that the strange world brings?
Did the tears fall into the heap unheeded,
These tears in mortal things?
But why it was that the whole world wasted,
This you will know when they count the tears,
After the dust of the grave is tasted,
After this noise of years.
Yet some things stay though a world lies broken,
I keep some things that were dear of old—
That first kiss spared and that last word spoken
And the glint of your hair's dark gold.
Do you mind that hour in the soft sweet morning
When I held you fast in divine alarms,
When my soul stood up like a god adorning
His body with bright arms?
Forget it not till the crowns are crumbled
And the swords of the kings are rent with rust—
Forget it not till the hills lie humbled,
And the springs of the seas run dust.
II
What was I back in the world's first wonder? —
An elf-child found on an ocean-reef,
A sea-child nursed by the surge and thunder,
And marked for the lyric grief.
I mind me well how the waves' edge whitened
As the shapes of the storm went whirling by—
How I laughed and ran when the loud void lightened,
And tempest shook the sky.
So I will go down by the way of the willows,
And whisper it out to the mother Sea,
To the soft sweet shores and the long bright billows,
The dream that cannot be.
There will be help for the soul's great trouble
Where the sea's heart sings to the listening ear,
Where the high gray cliff in the pool hangs double,
And the moon is misting the mere.
'Twas down in the sea that your soul took fashion,
O strange Love born of the white sea-wave!
And only the sea and her lyric passion
Can ease the wound you gave.
I will go down to the wide wild places,
Where the calm cliffs look on the shores around;
I will rest in the power of their great grave faces
And the gray hush of the ground.
On a cliff's high head a gray gull clamors,
But down at the base is the Devil's brew,
And the swing of arms and the heave of hammers,
And the white flood roaring through.
There on the cliff is the sea-bird's tavern,
And there with the wild things I'll find a home,
Laugh with the lightning, shout with the cavern,
Run with the feathering foam.
I will climb down where the nests are hanging,
And the young birds scream to the swinging deep,
Where the rocks and the iron winds are clanging,
And the long waves lift and leap.
I will thread the shores to the cavern hollows,
Where the edge of the wave runs white and thin;
I will sing to the surge and the foam that follows
When the dark tides thunder in.
I will go out where the sea-birds travel,
And mix my soul with the wind and sea ;
Let the green waves weave and the gray rains ravel,
And the tides go over me.
The Sea is the mother of songs and sorrows,
And out of her wonder our wild loves come;
And so it will be through the long to-morrows,
Till all our lips are dumb.
She knows all sighs and she knows all sinning,
And they whisper out in her breaking wave:
She has known it all since the far beginning,
Since the grief of that first grave.
She shakes the heart with her stars and thunder
And her soft low word when the winds are late;
For the sea is Woman, the sea is Wonder —
Her other name is Fate!
There is daring and dream in her billows breaking —
In the power of her beauty our griefs forget:
She can ease the heart of the long, long aching,
And bury old regret.
III
Will you find rest as our ways dissever?
Will the gladness grow as the days increase?
Howbeit, I leave on your soul forever
The word of the eternal peace.
I will go the road and my song shall save me,
Though grief may stay as the heart's old guest:
I will finish the work that the strange God gave me,
And then pass on to rest.
I will go back to the great world-sorrow,
To the millions bearing the double load —
The fate of to-day and the fear of tomorrow:
I will taste the dust of the road.
I will go back to the pains and the pities
That break the heart of the world with moan;
I will forget in the grief of the cities
The burden of my own.
There in the world-grief my own grief humbles,
My wild hour melts in the days to be,
As the wild white foam of a river crumbles,
Forgotten in the sea.