Francis Jammes

It is going to snow in a few days. I remember
This time last year. My heart, O how it bled!
Had I been asked: 'What ails thee?' I should have said:
'Nothing. Leave me alone. It is December.'
...

Last night the cricket sang when all was still.
I cannot tell you what he sang about.
His singing made the darkness thicker still.
The sad flame of my candle lengthened out.
...

You come when the sun sinks low,
accompanied by the hum of bees.

You come laughing with your red mouth
fierce, like the flowers of pomegranates.
...

Do not console me. I should not have heard.
If dreams, which were the only wealth I wist,
Leave my dark threshold whereon squats the mist,
I shall be ready, and shall speak no word.
...

A small house with a dog in front ...
O my love! Tonight, this rose is wet.
In the big park, by the rusty gate,
I walk with you in a timeless dream.
...

The forest paths are muddy, after the rain;
The meadows are soaked through and through again.
The blackbirds in the yellow osiers sing,
The yellow osiers good for basketing.
...

O God, when You send for me, let it be
Upon some festal day of dusty roads.
I wish, as I did ever here-below
By any road that pleases me, to go
...

I Love in old days Clara d'Ellébeuse,
The school-girl of old boarding-schools,
Who, on warm evenings, sat beneath the limes,
Reading the magazines of olden times.
...

The brooms glow in the desolate moors;
on the ochre hills, the heather sings:
But you cannot heal my sad heart or ease
The memory of my poor dead child.
...

Mademe De Warens, you would watch the storm
Folding the dark trees of your sad Charmettes,
Or else you played the spinet, in a fret,
You clever woman whom Jean-Jacques would scold.
...

Lass, when they talk of love, laugh in their face.
They find not love who seek it far and wide.
Man is a cold, hard brute. Your timid grace
Will leave his coarse desires unsatisfied.
...

The old village was with roses filled,
And I went wandering in the heat of the day,
And, after, o'er the sleeping leaves that chilled
The feet that walked among them where they lay.
...

There are days in June that seem to be December.
Thus sometimes the substance of this room
or more accurately the people in it who pray silently
start up in the midst of happiness and alter,
bewitched by a murmur from the calm foliage.
...

With feet at the fire, I am thinking of those birds
Which told Columbus that the land was nigh.
Water, water, water far as the sky.
At last a sailor shouted out these words:
...

By the yawning door, thick and studded and painted in green,
I saw a square of light which fell
On a budding branch. And I made these verses
To fix the moment of a dream
...

And the Church bells rang merrily, for they
Rang o'er the farmer's daughter's wedding-day.
The Church rang o'er the glorious August maize,
Rang o'er the dry, red thatch in summer's blaze,
Over the peace of barns rang out the bells,
...

You would be naked on the wet and pink heather,
like those women one reads of in school,
with goats grazing round your inviting figure.
You would sleep without dreaming of anything,
with your soft legs stretched out, warm and sweet,
...

As I stand in the foliage
which soaked, drips itself dry
in the steep, blue night, after the storm,
The voice of a lonely toad
calls
...

Summer of roses! O empress of flowers!
You are all I care to know:
you and your many sisters
who launch your love arrows, though already caught
in the pull of the tomb.
...