Alfred Mortier

Alfred Mortier Poems

Alfred Mortier Biography

Alfred Mortier, born Alfred Mortje, is a journalist and writer, born in Baden in 1865 , of Dutch father and a French mother, and died in Paris in 1937 . He was naturalized French in 1890 . Alfred Mortier has long inhabited Nice where his parents had settled in 1874 and, having studied at Nice High School ( Lycée Massena ), he studied law in Paris . He then launched into several areas including journalism, poetry, music, wrote numerous plays and became theater critic. Alfred Mortier wrote for The Scout Nice and Southeast and founded Le Petit Monaco which he directed for several years. He was still one of the founders of Mercure de France , and in 1895 , founding president of the Artistic Circle in Nice. Pierre Mortier (1882-1946), director of Gil Blas from 1911 to 1917, it is related.)

The Best Poem Of Alfred Mortier

I Ask You, Love

I ASK you, love, to understand but this.
For if you knew how I do love you, naught
Would shock you in my infidelities,
And you would know the reverence of my thought.

These women are not in my heart, be sure.
And you unwisely suffer, thinking I
Prefer a passing drunkenness to your
Reflective fascination, subtle, shy.

What if the body sins? Such luxury harms
The soul no whit. Despise the luring flower
Of carnal lips. Although I love your arms,
It is your soul that holds me in its power.

Your soul, a glass where candid pleasures shine,
Lute touched by mystery's seraph tenderly,
Cup of pure water still refreshing me,
When I am sickened with corrupted wine.

Dismiss the common folly of those wives
Whose mediocre pride makes them enslave
Their husbands in their narrow marriage gyves,
In memory of the maidenhead they gave.

O you my strength and weakness, you I hold
More dear. . . My love your soul and body mixes
In a miraculous fervour which is bold
To change the postulate that custom fixes.

If I indeed loved but your loveliness,
Then we might tremble for our union . . .
More than unstable passion, we possess
The high, veridical communion.

That of two souls, more than a carnal bond,
For soul alone in hearts ferments, sublime
Folly that builds new beings far beyond
Ignoble luxuries the sport of time.

Now do you understand that my vain rut
Should leave you calm? The bonds of flesh are too
Unstable to be crimes. If I loved but
Your body, I should not be loving you!

translated by Jethro Bithell

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