She said, "I am wrong to want something more, it's true.
The hours go by very quietly just so.
You are there. I never takes my eyes off you.
In your eyes I see your thoughts as they come and go.

To watch you is a joy I have not yet got through.
No doubt it is still very charming of its kind!
I watch, for I know everything that annoys you.
So that nothing comes knocking when you're not inclined.

I make myself so small in my corner near you.
You are my great lion, I am your little dove.
I listen to your leaves, the peacful froufrou.
Sometimes I pick up your pen when it falls off.

Without a doubt I have you. Surely I see you.
Thinking is a wine on which the dreamers are drunk.
I know. But sometimes I'd like to be dreamed of too.
When you are like that, in your books, all evening, sunk.

No lifting your head or saying a word to me,
There is a shadow deep down in my loving heart.
For me to see you whole, it is necessary
To look at me a little, sometimes, on your part."





Tears Fall In My Heart
Paul Verlaine

Tears fall in my heart
Rain falls on the town;
what is this numb hurt
that enters my heart?

Ah,the soft sound of rain
on roofs, on the ground!
To a dulled heart they came,
ah, the song of the rain!

Tears without reason
in the disheartened heart.
What? no trace of treason?
This grief's without reason.

It's far the worst pain
to never know why
without love or disdain
my heart has such pain!





Autumn Song
Paul Verlaine

Violins complain
Of autumn again,
They sob and moan.
And my heartstrings ache
Like the song they make,
A monotone.

Suffocating, drowned,
And hollowly, sound
The midnight chimes.
Then the days return
I knew, and I mourn
For bygone times.

And I fall and drift
With the winds that lift
My heavy grief.
Here and there they blow,
And I rise and go
Like a dead leaf.





My Room
Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

High up here I live
Right against the sky;
Pale and meditative
The moon comes here and I.
Let folks ring below,
What do I care today?
It is no one that I know-
One being gone away.

Unseen by others here
I stitch each silken flower,
Within inward tear on tear
Yet passionless: my tower
Gives me the cloudless sky.
From here I see the blue,
Star on star espy.
I see the tempest too.

Opposite my own
A chair stands through the hours.
His it was, that one;
One instant it was ours.
There it stands, the chair,
A ribbon signing it,
As in a calm despair-
My case, placed opposite.

A Memory
Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

When he grew pale, and his voice trembled,
And suddenly he could no longer speak;
When his eyes, burning beneath the lid,
Gave me a wound I thought he felt alike;
When all his charms, lighted by a fire
That has never faded,
Were printed in the depth of my desire,
He did not love. I did.





I Flee The City, Temples, And each Place
Louise Labe

I flee the city, temples, and each place
where you took pleasure in your own lament,
where you used every forceful argument
to make me yield what I could not replace.
Games, masques, tournaments bore me and I sigh
and I dream no beauty that is not of you.
And so I try to kill my passion too,
forcing another image to my eye,
hoping to break away from tender thought.
Deep in the woods I found a lonely trail,
and after wandering in a maze I sought
to put you wholly out of mind. I fail.
Only outside my body can I live
or else in exile like a fugitive.





Long-Felt Desires
Louise Labe

Long-felt desires, hopes as long as vain--
sad sighs--slow tears accustomed to run sad
into as many rivers as two eyes could add,
pouring like fountains, endless as the rain--
cruelty beyond humanity, a pain
so hard it makes compassionate stars go mad
with pity: these are the first passions I've had.
Do you think love could root in my soul again?
If it arched the great bow back again at me,
licked me again with fire, and stabbed me deep
with the violent worst, as awful as before,
the wounds that cut me everwhere would keep
me shielded, so there would be no place free
for love. It covers me. It can pierce no more.