A prize of £5 was offered for a translation in
similar form of' L'Impossible' by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore: Qui me rendre It's fours on la vie a des ailes, Et vole, vole ainsi que l'alonette aux deux, Lorsque tent de clone passe devant sex yeux, Qu'elle tombe eblonie au fond des flaws, de relies Qui parfinnent son nid, son ante, son sommeil, 'Et lustrent son plumage au lever du soleil! Cid! un de ces fils d'or pour ourdir ma journee, Utz debris de ce prisme aux brillantes con/curs! Au fond de ces beaux fours et de ces belles flews,
Un oti je sois libre, enfant, a peine nee.
Quaid l'amour de ma mere &all mon avenir; Quand on ne mourait pas encor dans ma fanzille; Oland tout vivait pour nzol, vaine petite fille! Quern(' vivre etait le ciel, ou s'en ressouvenirl Quand j'aimais .sans savoir cc que faimais, quand reline Me palpitait heureuse, et de quoi? je ne sais; Quota route la nature etait parfinn et flamme; Quand mes deux bras s'ouvraient devant ces jour,s . passes!
In choosing a nineteenth-century poem, for a change, I thought that I should be throwing the competition open to more entrants than usual. First, there could be no doubt about the poem's meaning; secondly, the rather looser form and more inexact vocabulary seemed to me to leave the trans- lator freer than does, for instance, a .baroque sonnet. , But I was disappointed. Now the poem is sentimental, and will speedily become banal once its few good images are blurred. The thread of gold from the rain- bow sheen of the lark's •feathers; the inti- mations of pre-existence in Quand vivre
Kitchin and D. L. L. Clarke. The com- petition proved more difficult than 1 had supposed: and suggests to me that I am not alone in finding a difficult and highly organised poem in the long run easier to translate than one which gives one more licence—to fall into the traps of poeticism.
PRIZES (P. A. T. O'DONNELL)
Who'll bring them back—winged days when Life will lift, Lift as the lark to range the deepest skies, When pageantry of light so blinds her eyes That she must sink to nest in flower-drift, Whose perfumes through her sleep, her spirit flow,
Whose sheen her plumage takes in morning 'S glow!
One wisp of witching gold 0 grant me now, One shiver from that crystal of delights!
And, from beyond those flowered days and nights,
One cloudless dream of infancy allow.
When mother's love enclosed my destiny: When death was still a stranger to my race; When all life lived for me—vain child of grace!— In Paradise, or Eden's memory!
When love and joy ..outbrimmed the heart's desire; And love for what? Joy, whence? I did not know.
When nature was a fume of flower and fire; When open arms embraced ... the long ago!
(HELENA BROUN)
Previous page
