Paul Verlaine: Promenade Sentimentale

no copyright infringement intended
(http://catalog.lambertvillelibrary.org/texts/French/verlaine/fetes/fetes.htm)

Le couchant dardait ses rayons suprêmes
Et le vent berçait les nénuphars blêmes ;
Les grands nénuphars, entre les roseaux,
Tristement luisaient sur les calmes eaux.
Moi, j’errais tout seul, promenant ma plaie
Au long de l’étang, parmi la saulaie
Où la brume vague évoquait un grand
Fantôme laiteux se désespérant
Et pleurant avec la voix des sarcelles
Qui se rappelaient en battant des ailes
Parmi la saulaie où j’errais tout seul
Promenant ma plaie ; et l’épais linceul
Des ténèbres vint noyer les suprêmes
Rayons du couchant dans ces ondes blêmes
Et les nénuphars, parmi les roseaux,
Les grands nénuphars sur les calmes eaux.

(http://membres.multimania.fr/fcollard/psent_lm.html)

Promenade Sentimentale is part of Paysages tristes, a cycle of poems from the first poetry collection of Verlaine (Poèmes saturniens, published in 1866). A sentimental stroll, the lover is lonely, tormented by past happiness, wandering along a pond that seem to feel the same uneasiness. Debussy started from this poem in what eventually became his Claire de Lune.

Here are two English renderings:

The sun's bright course was e'en about to fail,
While the wind rocked the water-lilies pale.
The lilies great, between their walls of rose,
Shone sadly where the ripple scarcely flows.
For me — I strayed alone, on grief to brood
On the pool's bank, anigh the willow wood,
Where the vague mists evoked a spectre vast
Of milky hue, genius of hopes gone past,
And weeping with the water-fowls' sad voice,
That call each other with a winged noise,
Anigh the willow-wood where lonely fall
My steps, the while I brood. And the dense pall
Of shadows drowned the light about to die,
Of the low sunset, in its waves so grey,
The water-lilies 'twixt their walls of rose,
Great lilies where the ripple scarcely flows.

translated by Ashmore Wingate (1904)
(http://webspace.webring.com/people/mm/monsieurmustache/verlainetrpsaturnprome2.html)

The sunset darted its level beam
Where the wind-rocked water lilies dream;
The water lilies calm and pale
That shine where reeds are green and frail.
And I wandered alone with a heart full sore,
By the pool where the willows line the shore,
Where the vague mist wakened a phantom tall
That wept in the voice of the wild fowls' call,
When they beat their wings by the willows white
Where I wandered alone in the shrouding night
Through the shadows that drowned the level beam
Where the wind-rocked water lilies dream —
The water lilies calm and pale
That shine where the reeds are green and frail.

translated by Bergen Applegate (1916)
(http://webspace.webring.com/people/mm/monsieurmustache/verlainetrpsaturnprome1.html)

(Paul Verlaine)