Rudyard Kipling

Un texte qui me fait rêver... même que je préfère me taire, pour une fois.

The Way Through the Woods.


They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods. . . .
But there is no road through the woods.

By Rudyard Kipling

My Boy Jack

"Have you news of my boy Jack?"
Not this tide.
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Has any one else had word of him?"
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find!"
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind -
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

J'ai bien aimé le premier, bien que je n'ai pas compris 100% du texte, mais cet air de nostalgie et .., je ne sais pas cette impression qui se dégage.
Le deuxième, je n'ai rien compris (je pense qu'on peut mettre mon anglais en cause)
tide= marrée ?

c'est l'histoire de Kipling lui même qui s'est porté volontaire pour aller en Europe en 1914 et qui est mort à 19 ans. Ici, Kipling raconte son angoisse, attendant de ses nouvelles.

et oui, tide=marée, flot, ou voire vague