Your soul is a chosen landscape
charmed by masquers and revellers
playing the lute and dancing and almost
sad beneath their fanciful disguises!
Even while singing, in a minor key,
of victorious love and fortunate living
they do not seem to believe in their happiness,
and their song mingles with the moonlight,
the calm moonlight, sad and beautiful,
which sets the birds in the trees dreaming,
and makes the fountains sob with ecstasy,
the tall slender fountains among the marble statues!
--Paul Verlaine
translated by Peter Low
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