by
Pierre-Félix Louis (1870 - 1925), as Pierre Louÿs
Le crépuscule de l'eau
Language: French (Français)
Available translation(s): ENG
Les fleurs s'en sont allées au fil de l'eau le long des rives
Les fleurs? L'eau merveilleuse où le soir qui meurt se mordore
Les pétales de crépuscule tournent et chavirent
Au fil du fleuve qu'un frisson bleu de brise déflore
Et si loin par la plaine et la plaine se suivirent
Qu'aux derniers champs du monde où naît rouge l'aurore.
Les fleurs s'en sont allées au fil de l'eau le long des rives
Les fleurs? celles de chair et de lin frêle encorollées
Que berce le roulis des lentes barques évasives
Et tristement, avec des nonchalances désolées,
Peuplent d'un vol le miroir des rivières massives
Des rivières entre les pins, longues allées.
Les fleurs sur l'eau qui gyre au fil des fleuves en allées...
O le silence noir des eaux! l'effroi sous les ramures
Frisson glacé de rivière frileuse dévêtue...
Et dans la haute nuit du parc où sont morts le murmures
Dans la brume où s'érige une pâleur de statue,
La tristesse et la nudité des eaux nocturnes.
Les fleurs sur l'eau qui gyre au fil des fleuves en allées...
Authorship:
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
Available translations, adaptations, and transliterations (if applicable):
- ENG English (Patrick Cardy) , title 1: "The twilight of water", copyright © 1986, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [
Administrator]
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 19
Word count: 182
The twilight of water
Language: English  after the French (Français)
The flowers have drifted away in the low of the water along the shores
The flowers? The marvellous water in which the dying evening turns golden;
the dying petals twirl and topple
in the current of the river, deflowered by a chill blue breeze,
and far, far across the plains, run on to
the edge of the world, where is born the red dawn.
The flowers have drifted away in the flow of the water along the shores
The flowers? Those of fresh and fragile flax, encorollate,
are soothed by the rolling of slow, elusive barques,
and sadly, with sorrowful heedlessness, alight and multiply
on the mirrored surfaces of slow-moving rivers,
flowing, into the distance, between the pines.
The flowers on the whirling water in the flow of tree-lined streams...
O the black silence of the waters! The terror under the branches;
glacial chill of the frozen river stripped...
and in the deep night of the park where whispers have died
in the mist in which rises the pallor of a statue,
the sadness and the nudity of the nocturnal waters.
The flowers on the whirling water in the flow of tree-lined streams...
Authorship:
Based on:
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 19
Word count: 194