Le départ
Language: French (Français)
Available translation(s): ENG
Je n'emporte avec moi sur la mer sans retour
Qu'une rose cueillie à notre long amour.
J'ai tout quitté ; mon pas laisse encore sur la grève
Empreinte au sable insoucieux sa trace brève
Et la mer en montant aura vite effacé
Ce vestige incertain qu'y laissa mon passé.
Partons ! que l'âpre vent en mes voiles tendues
Souffle et m'entraîne loin de la terre perdue
Là-bas. Qu'un autre pleure en fuite à l'horizon
La tuile rouge encore au toit de sa maison,
Là-bas, diminuée et déjà si lointaine !
Qu'il regrette le clos, le champ et la fontaine !
Moi je ferme la porte et je ne pleure pas.
Et puissent, si les dieux me mènent au trépas,
Les flots m'ensevelir en la tombe que creuse
Au voyageur la mer perfide et dangereuse !
Car je mourrai debout comme tu m'auras vu,
Sur la proue, au départ, heureux et gai pourvu
Que la rose à jamais de mon amour vivant
Embaume la tempête et parfume le vent.
Confirmed with Henri de Régnier, Les Médailles d’argile, Paris, Société du Mercure de France, 1903 (4e éd.), pages 102-103.
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 or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- ENG English (Garrett Medlock) , "The departure", copyright © 2020, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust
[Administrator] , Geoffrey Wieting , Garrett Medlock
[Guest Editor] This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 20
Word count: 168
The departure
Language: English  after the French (Français)
I bring nothing with me, across the sea without return,
But a rose picked [in] our long love.
I have left everything; my step leaves again on the shore
Its brief track imprinted in the untroubled sand
And the rising sea will have quickly wiped away
This uncertain trace which my past left there.
Let us go! let the rough wind blow in my taut sails
And pull me far away from the lost land
Over there. Let another [mourn] the horizon in flight,
The red tile still on the roof of their house,
Over there, diminished and already so far off!
Let them miss the plot, the field, and the fountain!
[As for] me, I close the door and I do not weep.
And if the gods lead me to death,
May the waters bury me in the tomb which the sea,
Treacherous and perilous, digs for the voyager!
Since I will die upright as you will have seen me,
On the prow, departing, happy and gay,
As long as the rose of my living love
Forever embalms the tempest and perfumes the wind.
Authorship:
- Translation from French (Français) to English copyright © 2020 by Garrett Medlock, (re)printed on this website with kind permission. To reprint and distribute this author's work for concert programs, CD booklets, etc., you may ask the copyright-holder(s) directly or ask us; we are authorized to grant permission on their behalf. Please provide the translator's name when contacting us.
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This text was added to the website: 2020-03-30
Line count: 20
Word count: 185