Serre chaude
Language: French (Français)
Our translations: ENG ENG
Ô serre au milieu des forêts !
Et vos portes à jamais closes !
Et tout ce qu'il y a sous votre coupole !
Et dans mon âme en vos analogies !
Les pensées d'une princesse qui a faim,
L'ennui d'un matelot dans le désert,
Une musique de cuivreaux fenêtres des incurables.
Allez aux angles les plus tièdes !
On dirait une femme évanouie un jour de moisson :
Il y a des postillons dans la cour de l'hospice ;
Au loin, passe un chasseur d'élans, devenu infirmier.
Examinez au clair de lune !
(Oh! rien n'y est à sa place !)
On dirait une folle devant les juges,
Un navire de guerre à pleines voiles sur un canal,
Des oiseaux de nuit sur des lys,
Un glas vers midi,
(Là-bàs sous ces cloches !)
Une étape de malades dans la prairie,
Une odeur d'éther un jour de soleil.
Mon Dieu ! Mon Dieu ! Quand aurons-nous la pluie,
Et la neige et le vent dans la serre !
Text 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 (Barbara Miller) , "Hothouse", copyright © 2004, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- ENG English (Sophie Huet) , "Hothouse", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [
Administrator]
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 22
Word count: 158
Hothouse
Language: English after the French (Français)
O hothouse in the forest!
And your never-closed doors!
And all there is beneath your glass dome!
And analogies in my soul!
The thoughts of a starving princess,
The boredom of a sailor marooned in the desert,
Brassy music at hospital windows.
Go to the shallowest angles!
It's like a woman who faints on harvest day,
There are postillons in the hospital's yard,
A hunter turned nurse passes in the distance
Examined in the moonlight.
Oh! nothing is in its place.
It's like a crazy woman in front of the judges,
A warship with full sails
on a canal of nightbirds on lilies
A knell at noon
(There, under those bells!)
A series of invalids in the prairie
An ether smell, a sunny day
My God! My God! When will it rain
and snow and blow wind in the hothouse!
Text Authorship:
Based on:
- a text in French (Français) by Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949), "Serre chaude", written 1889, appears in Serres chaudes, Paris, Éd. Léon Vanier, first published 1889
This text was added to the website: 2009-04-15
Line count: 22
Word count: 140