The set of the sails ...

Un poème de George Gordon, Lord Byron, somme toute assez prévisible et banal.

Il est assez bien lu dans la vidéo ci-dessous, qui rend justice a son rythme, à ses assonances.

Mais surtout, il a été merveilleusement mis en musique par Joan Baez, dans une chanson qui sait rendre neuve, et poignante, cette histoire de séparation - pourtant cent fois rebattue.

Le lien vers cette version chantée ici :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFNu47XR2KE&feature=related

Script ici : http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/

ILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo,

Shovel them under and let me work--

I am the grass; I cover all.

 

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?

Where are we now?

 

I am the grass.

Let me work.

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Envie d'entendre un beau poème américain ? Cliquez.
Ci-dessous le script du poème, suivi d'une brève (mais très pertinente) analyse critique.
Savourez le travail sur les rythmes et les sons (allitérations, assonances, ...)

http://cai.ucdavis.edu/uccp/workingweary.html

"The set of the sails" ?  A pretty strange header...

Well, it refers to this :

Winds of Fate

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
That tells them the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
As we voyage along through life:
'Tis the set of the soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Un "coup de moins bien" ? Besoin de reprendre confiance, de vous persuader que la vie est d'abord et avant tout ce que nous en faisons, et qu'elle est sa propre justification, nécessaire et suffisante ? Suivez le lien. Le poème, tel que lu, est incomplet.

Version intégrale ci-dessous.

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
        Life is but an empty dream ! —
    For the soul is dead that slumbers,
        And things are not what they seem.

    Life is real !   Life is earnest!
        And the grave is not its goal ;
    Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
        Was not spoken of the soul.

    Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
        Is our destined end or way ;
    But to act, that each to-morrow
        Find us farther than to-day.

    Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
        And our hearts, though stout and brave,
    Still, like muffled drums, are beating
        Funeral marches to the grave.

    In the world's broad field of battle,
        In the bivouac of Life,
    Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
        Be a hero in the strife !

    Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
        Let the dead Past bury its dead !
    Act,— act in the living Present !
        Heart within, and God o'erhead !

    Lives of great men all remind us
        We can make our lives sublime,
    And, departing, leave behind us
        Footprints on the sands of time ;

    Footprints, that perhaps another,
        Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
    A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
        Seeing, shall take heart again.

    Let us, then, be up and doing,
        With a heart for any fate ;
    Still achieving, still pursuing,
        Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)