Debussy

La Flûte de Pan

The flute of Pan

For the day of Hyacinthus, he gave me a pan flute made of cut reeds, bonded with white wax which tastes

sweet to my lips like honey.

He teaches me to play, as I sit on his lap; but I am a little fearful.

He plays it after me, so softly that I barely can hear him.

We don’t have anything to say, we are so close to one another,

but our songs want to answer each other, and

our mouths unite in turn on the flute.

It is late; here is the song of the green frogs that

begins with the night. My mother will never believe

I stayed out so long to look for my lost belt.

La Chevelure

The main of hair

He said to me:

‘Last night, I had a dream… I had your main of hair around my neck. I had your hair like a black

necklace all round my throat and over my chest.I caressed it and it was mine; and we

were united  forever by the same tresses,mouth on mouth, just as two laurels

often share one root. And little by little,  it seemed to me, so intertwined

were our limbs, that I was becoming you, or you were entering into me like a dream.’

When he had finished, he gently put his hands on my shoulders and gazed at me so tenderly that I lowered my eyes with a shiver.

Le Tombeau de Naïades

The tomb of the Naiads

Along the frost covered forest I walked; my hair on my mouth, blooming with tiny icicles, and my

sandals were heavy with muddy, packed snow.

He said to me: ‘What are you looking for?’ ‘I follow the track of the satyr.

His little cloven hoof-marks alternate like holes in a white coat.’

He said to me: ‘The satyrs are dead. The satyrs and the nymphs too. For thirty years there

has not been a winter so terrible. The tracks you see are those of a goat. But let us stay here, where their tomb is.’

And with the iron head of his hoe he broke the ice of the spring, where the naiads used to laugh. He picked up

some huge ice fragments, and, raising them to the pale sky, looked through them.

Duparc

L'invitation au Voyage

Invitation to journey

My child, my sister, think how sweet to go there and live together!

To love freely, to love and  to die in the land that resembles you!

The wet suns of those cloudy skies

For my spirit the same mysterious charms as your treacherous eyes

Shining through their tears.

There - nothing lives but order and beauty,

Luxury, calm, and voluptuous delight.

See those vessels sleeping on those canals with a wandering soul;

To satisfy your slightest desire

They come from all over the world

The setting suns clothe the fields,

Canals and the entire town with hyacinth and gold;

The world falls asleep in a warm light.

There - nothing lives but order and beauty,

Luxury, calm, and voluptuous delight.

La Vague et la Cloche

The wave and the bell

Once time,  overwhelmed by a powerful drink,

I dreamed that amid the waves and the roar of the sea I sailed without a lantern in the night,

A bleak oarsman, with no hope of reaching land...

The ocean spat its foam on my forehead, and the wind chilled me with horror to the core,

The waves crashed down around me like walls, with that slow rhythm that a silence interrupts…

Then everything changed. The sea and its black tumult subsided.

Beneath my feet the floor of the boat collapsed... And I was alone in an old bell-tower,

Furiously riding a swaying bell.

I was stubbornly hugging the clamorous metal, convulsive, and closing my eyes with the effort.

The rumbling made the old stones tremble, so constantly I activated the heavy swing.

Why didn’t you say, O dream, where God leads us? Why didn’t you say if they will ever end,

The fruitless toil and the eternal strife of which human life, alas, is made?

Chanson Triste

Song of sadness
In your heart, moonlight sleeps, a gentle moonlight of summer

And to escape the troublesome life, I will drown in your brightness.

I shall forget past sorrows, my love,  when you cradle my sad heart and my thoughts

In your loving calm arms.

You will take my poor head, Oh! sometimes on your lap,

and recite to it a ballad that will seem to speak of us;

And from your eyes full of sorrow, from your eyes I will then drink

so many kisses and so much love that perhaps I shall be healed.

La Vie Anterieure

A previous life
I have long lived under vast porticoes that the sea suns tinged you with a thousand fires.

Whose giant pillars, straight and majestic, made them look, in the evening, like basalt caves.

The swells, rolling the images of the skies, mixed of a solemn and mystic way,

The mighty chords of their rich music with the colors of sunset reflected in my eyes.

It is there that I have lived in voluptuous rest, In the middle of the blue brightness and waves

And naked slaves all impregnated in perfume who fanned my brow with fronds of palm,

And whose only care was to deepen

The secret grief which made me languish.