Stuart Merrill

Stuart Fitzrandolph Merrill (August 1, 1863 in Hempstead, New York – December 1, 1915 in Versailles, France) was an American poet who wrote in French.

Quotes edit

Fume l'encens, veille l'amour,
Dans son lit bleu la vierge est morte;
Couve le feu, tombe le jour,
L'Ange, mes soeurs, frappe à la porte.
- Translation: Incense smokes, and love takes care,
  In her blue bed the virgin died;
  The fire broods, the day falls,
  The Angel, sisters, knocks on the door.
  - "La Mystérieuse Chanson"

Sonore immensité des mers de l’Harmonie,
Où les rêves, vaisseaux pris d’un vaste frisson,
Voguent vers l’inconnu, leur voilure infinie
Claquant aven angoisse aux bourrasques du Son!
- Translation: Sonorous immensity of the seas of Harmony
  Where dreams like ships that shake in the profound,
  Voyage to the unknown, their sails bent to infinity,
  Billowing with anguish in the gusts of Sound.
  - "Pendant qu’elle chantait", from Les gammes, translated by Catherine Perry and Henry Weinfield in The White Tomb: Selected Writing, Talisman House, 1999.

I believe Beauty is the condition of the perfect life, just as important as Virtue and Truth.
- "Credo"

About edit

In the whole period, from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson to Edwin Arlington Robinson and Robert Frost, the greatest American poet is Stuart Merrill.
- Kenneth Rexroth, as quoted in Ramez Qureshi on Stuart Merrill's The White Tomb: Selected Writing

External links edit

( Encyclopedic article on Stuart Merrill on Wikipedia
Media related to Stuart Merrill on Wikimedia Commons
Selected poems (in French)