Ode to a Nightingale My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her; At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder, Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings; A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars -Rimbaud

Keats

HAPPY is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own;
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent:
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment	5
For skies Italian, and an inward groan
To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;
Enough their simple loveliness for me,	10
Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:
Yet do I often warmly burn to see
Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,
And float with them about the summer waters.

Claire de Lune

By Paul Verlaine (1844 – 1896)

Votre âme est un paysage choisi Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau, Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau, Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

Your soul is a chosen landscape Where charming masked and costumed figures go Playing the lute and dancing and almost Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

All sing in a minor key Of all-conquering love and careless fortune They do not seem to believe in their happiness And their song mingles with the moonlight.

The still moonlight, sad and beautiful, Which gives the birds to dream in the trees And makes the fountain sprays sob in ecstasy, The tall, slender fountain sprays among the marble statues.

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Cinderella by Sylvia Plath

The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels, Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels Begin on tilted violins to span The whole revolving tall glass palace hall Where guests slide gliding into light like wine; Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall Reflecting in a million flagons' shine, And glided couples all in whirling trance Follow holiday revel begun long since, Until near twelve the strange girl all at once Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk She hears the caustic ticking of the clock.