Debussy’s Clair de Lune II

Clair de Lune

Your soul is a chosen landscape
On which masks and Bergamasques cast enchantment as they go,
Playing the lute, and dancing, and all but
Sad beneath their fantasy-disguises.

Singing all the while, in the minor mode,
Of all-conquering love and life so kind to them
They do not seem to believe in their good fortune,
And their song mingles with the moonlight,
 
 With the calm moonlight, sad and lovely,
 Which makes the birds dream in the trees,
 And the plumes of the fountains weep in ecstasy,
 The tall, slender plumes of the fountains among the marble sculptures. 

Note

“Clair de lune” (French for “Moonlight”) is a poem written by French poet Paul Verlaine in 1869. It is the inspiration for the third and most famous movement…