Chant d'Automne - Paul Verlaine

Paul Verlaine was born into a military family in Metz on 30 March 1844; he was a French poet, he moved from the provinces of Paris as a boy. He was registered as a pupil in the institution Landry in 1853. Verlaine left the schools and began to study law in 1862. After falling in with the younger Parnassian poets he gave up his legal studies and became an insurance salesman.

His father died in 1865 and he had already published a number of poems in magazines and reviews, but 1866 marks the appearance of seven Verlaine’s poems in Le Parnasse contemporain. He wrote several wonderful poems and Chan d’Automne is one of the most beautiful Verlaine’s masterpieces.

Poems in french

Chant d'Automne

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone.

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l'heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure

Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

Paul Verlaine

Autumn Song

The long sobs
the violins
the Fall
Hurt my heart
On a languid
Monotonous.

All suffocating
And pale, when
Sounds the hour
I remember
Old days
And I cry

And I'm going
In the ill wind
take me to
Hither and thither,
Like the
Dead leaf.

Paul Verlaine