Category: Poetry

A Love Letter

Bob-Byerley - The love letter
Bob-Byerley – The love letter

All the Year Round was a weekly literary magazine founded and owned by Charles Dickens, published between 1859 and 1895 throughout the United Kingdom. It was edited by Dickens until shortly before his death in 1870, and then his eldest son Charles Dickens, Jr. took over the magazine.

The following poem was published anonymously in its issue of August 21, 1886. It is a beautiful declaration of love addressed to a child. Although the author does never tell the child’s gender, the words “like a Queen” make it clear that it is a girl. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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A une jeune amie, par Jean Aicard

Felice Casorati - Bambina che gioca su un tappeto rosso
Felice Casorati – Bambina che gioca su un tappeto rosso (1912)

Dans ce poème provenant du recueil de vers Le Livre d’Heures de l’Amour, l’auteur s’adresse à une jeune fille, il lui demande de se détourner de lui, devenu trop vieux : « J’ai l’âge triste où l’on est sage, / Mon âme est une fleur fanée / Où ta lèvre boirait des pleurs ». Il lui recommande plutôt de suivre un papillon, de chercher les nids d’oiseaux, ou de cueillir des fleurs. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Yvonne of Brittany, by Ernest Dowson

In his lifetime, Ernest Dowson published two volumes of poetry, Verses in June 1896, and Decorations: in Verse and Prose in December 1899, two months before his death. Except the poems in prose at the end of Decorations, they were included in The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson, With a Memoir by Arthur Symons, available on the web as a Project Gutenberg Ebook, and they can also be seen on ELCore.Net, Website of E. L. Core.

The volume Verses is dedicated to Adelaide Foltinowicz, a Polish girl born in 1878, with whom Dowson was in love. Having had hopes for a common future, many poems have a light and happy side, contrasting with the dark ones at the end of Decorations, written in bitter disappointment after Adelaide’s marriage with another man. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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John Clare’s Asylum Poems

William Hilton - John Clare
William Hilton – John Clare (1820) – National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 1469

John Clare (b. July 13, 1793; d. May 20, 1864) was an English farm labourer and poet. According to his biographer Jonathan Bate, Clare was “the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Le cher parfum, par Jean Aicard

Daniel F. Gerhartz - The daughter of the nature - a woman
Daniel F. Gerhartz – The daughter of the nature – a woman – from Wikiart

Provenant du recueil de vers Le Livre d’Heures de l’Amour (1887), voici un beau poème brûlant de sensualité. Goûter la bien-aimée comme un fruit, respirer son corps aux odeurs envoûtantes d’herbes et de fleurs, le désir du poète se pare de parfums, et quand la belle n’est pas là, ceux-ci viennent hanter ses souvenirs. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Une allée au Luxembourg, par Gérard de Nerval

Yuri Krotov – Fille au parapluie rouge (2003) – provient de artyurikrotov.com

L’écrivain et poète Gérard de Nerval, de son vrai nom Gérard Labrunie, est une figure majeure du romantisme français. Né le 22 mai 1808 à Paris, il perdit à deux ans et demi sa mère, qu’il n’avait pratiquement jamais vue, et cet évènement semble avoir durablement marqué son psychisme. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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