Tag: Paul Verlaine

Clare de Lune

Your soul is a select landscape
Where charming masqueraders and 
bergamaskers go
Playing the lute and dancing and almost
Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

All sing in a minor key
Of victorious love and the opportune life,
They do not seem to believe in their happiness
And their song mingles with the moonlight,

With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful,
That sets the birds dreaming in the trees
And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy,
The tall slender fountains among marble statues.

Paul Verlaine, 1869
Joseph Wright of Derby, Dovedale by Moonlight, 1788
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, Moonlight on the Bosphorus 1865

(Top image: Arkhip Kuindzhi Ivanovich, Moonlit Night on the Dneiper, 1882)(Images Courtesy: The State Tretyakov Gallery, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Ohio)