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from the FRENCH of Gérard de Nerval
 
EL DESDICHADO
 
I am the Shadow—Widowed—Unconsoled,
The Prince of Aquitaine of Castle Wrack:
My only Star is dead,—my lute of stars untold
Emblazons Melancholy’s Sun of Black.
 
In the Tomb’s night, You who once consoled,
Oh give Tyrrhenian Posilippo back,
The flowers that pleased my heart, now waste and cold,
The Vine and Rose twined round the trellis¹ rack.
 
I—Love or Phoebus?  Lusignan? Biron?
The Queen has branded my brow with her lips;
I’ve dreamed in Grottos where the Siren dips …
 
And victor twice I’ve crossed the Acheron:
I’ve used the Orphic lyre in turn to play
Sighs of the Saint, the weeping of the Fay.

                                     (¹ The French has ‘treille’, which means ‘vine-arbour’.)
 
Gérard de Nerval (translated by Alan Marshfield)

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