•  
          Comme l’autre Ophélie,
          Dont la douce folie
          S’endort en murmurant
               Dans le torrent,

          Pâle, déchevelée
          Et dans l’onde étoilée
          Éparpillant encor
               Ses tresses d’or,

          Et comme Juliette,
          Qui craignait l’alouette
          Éveillée au matin
               Parmi le thym...

  •  
    Un soir, tu t’envolas comme l’oiseau de mer
    Dont le coup d’aile altier nargue le gouffre amer :
    Et moi, debout sur la colline,
    Murmurant à la brise un chant d’Hiawatha,
    Longtemps je regardai le flot qui t’emporta,
    O doux chantre d’Evangeline !

    Comme on voit l’astre d’or, plongeant an sein des eaux,
    Laisser derrière lui de lumineux réseaux...

  • When youth was lord of my unchallenged fate,
    And time seemed but the vassal of my will,
    I entertainëd certain guests of state—
    The great of older days, who, faithful still,
    Have kept with me the pact my youth had made.

    And I remember how one galleon rare
    From the far distance of a time long dead
    Came on the wings of a fair-fortuned air...

  • His tongue was touched with sacred fire,
      He could not rest, he must speak out,
      When Liberty lay stabbed, and doubt
    Stalked through the night in vestments dire,—

    When slaves uplifted manacled hands,
      Praying in agony and despair,
      And answer came not anywhere,
    But gloom through all the stricken lands,—

    His voice for...

  • The actor’s dead, and memory alone
    Recalls the genial magic of his tone;
    Marble nor canvas nor the printed page
    Shall tell his genius to another age:
    A memory, doomed to dwindle less and less,
    His world-wide fame shrinks to this littleness.
    Yet if, a half a century from to-day,
    A tender smile about our old lips play,
    And if our...

  • On His Birthday, 27th February, 1867
    I NEED not praise the sweetness of his song,
      Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds
    Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong
    The new moon’s mirrored skiff, he slides along,
      Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds.

    With loving breath of all the winds his name
      Is blown about...

  • His tongue was touched with sacred fire,
      He could not rest, he must speak out,
      When Liberty lay stabbed, and doubt
    Stalked through the night in vestments dire,—

    When slaves uplifted manacled hands,
      Praying in agony and despair,
      And answer came not anywhere,
    But gloom through all the stricken lands,—

    His voice for...

  • J'estois assis au meilleu des neuf seurs,
    Libre et distraict des pensees mortelles,
    Si commencea à chanter l'une d'elles,
    Chant qui m'emplit d'infinies doulceurs :

    Assemblez vous (dict elle) ô proffesseurs
    Des bonnes ars et des sciences belles,
    Pour consacrer louenges eternelles
    Au plus grand Roy des Rois voz deffenseurs.

    Dictes comment...