Ballade des Dames du temps jadis / François Villon

Dites-moi où, n'en quel pays,
Est Flora la belle Romaine,
Archipiades, ne Thaïs,
Qui fut sa cousine germaine,
Echo, parlant quant bruit on mène
Dessus rivière ou sur étang,
Qui beauté eut trop plus qu'humaine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

Où est la très sage Héloïs,
Pour qui fut châtré et puis moine
Pierre Esbaillart à Saint-Denis?
Pour son amour eut cette essoine.
Semblablement, où est la roine
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fût jeté en un sac en Seine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

La roine Blanche comme un lis
Qui chantait à voix de sirène,
Berthe au grand pied, Bietrix, Aliz,
Haramburgis qui tint le Maine,
Et Jeanne, la bonne Lorraine
Qu'Anglais brûlèrent à Rouen;
Où sont-ils, où, Vierge souvraine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

Prince, n'enquerrez de semaine
Où elles sont, ni de cet an,
Que ce refrain ne vous remaine:
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

---

Although my French is very weak, I find the original sublime, and the translations - well - less so.

A noteworthy translation by Dante Gabriel Rosetti, one of the leaders of the English pre-Raphaelite movement, may be found at this link. It is named 'The Ballad of the Dead Ladies', which sounds harsh to the modern ear, when compared with the original French 'Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past'.

In Heller's wonderful Catch 22, Yossarian's question "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear" is of course an allusion to 'ce refrain'. A number of further translations may be found here.

Location: Over Avignon (at least in my mind)

Night Mail / Wystan Hugh Auden

(Ed. 16/08/2008) - I watched a the complete Night Mail at YouTube, and of course Auden's poem appears at the movie's end, and not the beginning as I had previously written. Anyway, the movie itself is warmly recommended.

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

---

The poem was written by W. H. Auden in 1936 especially to accompany a documentary. This makes for a lovely example of 'high' art embedded in a 'popular' production. (This leads me to the thought that it is much more important for art to be relevant than to cater to anyone's particular snobbery).

Only the poem part of the film -


The complete Night Mail - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Mood: under full steam