Your soul is a choice, bucolic scene
With charming travellers in a masquerade
Playing the lute and dancing, yet seem
Sad beneath their fanciful charade.
All carouse in a minor key
Of victorious love and opportunity,
They seem not to believe in their delight
And their song mingles with the moonlight,
In the still moonlight, beautiful and blue,
Birds in the trees dream and sigh by
Elegant fountains among marble statues,
And the cascades in their ecstasy cry.
Translation of one of Verlaine's most famous poems and the inspiration for one of Debussey's celebrated piano suites.
