POÉSIES  ANGLAISES

 

Ayant enseigné trente-cinq ans dans une institution dite « bilingue », avec tous les compromis (et les compromissions de la «  haute administration »…) que ce qualificatif sous-entend, je ne me refuse pas le plaisir d’inclure ici quelques poèmes américains et anglais mémorisés vers l’âge de seize ans, dans la classe d’anglais du bon abbé Simon Amiot, un professeur affable et compétent (il avait étudié à Londres et prononçait l’anglais avec un accent britannique, ce qui nous plaisait autant que cela nous étonnait…). La 7^e strophe, surtout, devait inspirer l’idéalisme de ma jeunesse et même de mon âge mûr. Voilà ce que j’ai retenu de mes bons maîtres. Cultivé et sympathique, pas du tout exigeant, sa mort subite d’une crise cardiaque à un âge relativement jeune fut un choc pour toute la classe. Je salue ici sa mémoire.

A PSALM OF LIFE

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream !
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest !
And the grave is not its goal;
« Dust thou art, to dust returnest »
Was not spoken of the soul !

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined and or way ;
But to act, that each tomorrow,
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still like muffled drums are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no future, hom’er pleasant !
Let the dead part bury its dead !
Act, act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o’er head !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime.
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

Footprints that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er lives solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn labor and to wait.

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life (Knickbocker Magazine, Oct. 1838, Voices in the Night).

Deux autres poèmes (retrouvés au cours d’un rangement) étudiés avec mon professeur d’anglais :

MY WIFE

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The Great Artificer
Made my mate.

Honor, anger, valor, fire ;
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench, or evil stir,
The Mighty Master
Gave to her.

Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul-free,
The August Father
Gave to me.

(Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896), n° XXVI)

REQUIEM

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me die.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me :
‘Here he lies where he longed to be ;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.’

(Sur la tombe de Stevenson aux îles Samoa, 1887)

ÉPIGRAMME

Sir, I admit your general rule
That every poet is a fool
But you yourself may serve to show it
That every fool is not a poet !

Il me reste à retrouver l’auteur de cette épigramme, apprise il y a au moins six décades…