Selected Poems
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For most of his life, Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was the most famous writer in the world. His legacy includes the nineteenth century's most celebrated works of drama, fiction, memoir, and criticism. But in his day Hugo was know foremost as a poet-indeed the greatest French poet of the age. He wrote with passion about history, erotic experience, familial love, philosophy, nature, social justice, art, and mysticism. In this new bicentennial edition, acclaimed poet and translator Brooks Haxton offers an exquisite selection of Hugo's finest work: love poems, historical tableaux, elegy, and idyll, including his incomparable "Boaz Asleep," which Marcel Proust praised as the most beautiful poem of the nineteenth century. "One of those rare and providential minds who in the domain of literature bring about the salvation of us all." (Charles Baudelaire)
To My Odes3The Captive5Moonlight9The Djinns11Reverie17Rapture19The Slope of Reverie21Setting Suns (II)29Setting Suns (VI)31To the Column33To Albrecht Durer39'The war that scoundrel wages ...'41The Cow43'Just as in a forest's drowsy pools ... '45Written on the pane of a Flemish window45Olympio's Sadness47Oceano Nox55June Nights59Memory of the Night of the Fourth61What the poet said to himself in 184863The Expiation65To the People85Stella87'Blow forever, trumpets of thought ... '89'It was raining that night ... '91'The poet goes away into the fields ... '95My Two Daughters95'The clarity that fills ... '97To Andre Chenier99Life in the Fields99Reply to an Act of Accusation105Vere Novo115The Party at Therese's115'Happy the man ... '121A Stop in the Middle of a Walk121The Spinning Wheel of Omphale125Letter127Words Spoken in the Shadows129Written on the Bottom of a Crucifix131'Seeing her grandmother occupied spinning wool ... '131Magnitudo Parvi131'I felt I had gone mad ... '135'She had formed this habit ... '135'She was place ... '137'Oh spring! oh dawn! on memories! ... '139Veni, Vidi, Vixi143'Tomorrow, at dawn ... '145At Villequier147Mors155The Beggar157Words on the Dunes159Mugitusque Boum161'I paid the fisherman ... '163Shepherds and Flocks165'I gathered this flower for you on the hill ... '167'Strophe of the poet ... '169'A shade was waiting ... '171'One day the solemn spirit ... '173Clearing173Nomen, Numen, Lumen175To the One Who Stayed Behind in France177Sowing Season, Evening197'The troop of children read and spell ... '197The Lion's Midday Sleep201'I'm setting out to narrate that horrific year ... '203On Top of Paris's Ramparts2031 January205Letter to a Woman205Open Windows211Jeannine Asleep ('She's asleep ... ')211Conscience215Boaz Asleep217Christ's First Encounter with the Tomb223The Hydra229Mohammed229The Parricide229The Work of the Prisoners237The Infanta's Rose241After the Battle253The Sister of Mercy255After the Battle of the Caudine Forks257Et Nox Facta Est259'The hexameter ... '261The Theophile Gautier261Notes267Index of Titles296Index of First Lines301
