The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

Saint-John Perse

(Alexis Saint-Léger Léger) 1887–1975

guadeloupe

B

oth a poet and a politician, Perse used the pseudonym Saint-John Perse

to keep his careers separate. Recognized by his literary peers for a small

but respected body of published work, he eventually won the Nobel

Prize in Literature (1960). It has been suggested that his interest in the symbolic

and the personal had its origin in his Caribbean upbringing. Perse did not begin

to write poetry until the sudden death of his father in 1907. After five years in

China as a diplomat, he became secretary general at the quai d’Orsay. When

France was invaded, he refused to act as a collaborator in his post as foreign

secretary and in 1940 settled in the United States, where he served at the Library

of Congress as a consultant in French poetry. Principal works: Éloges, 1911; Amitié

du prince, 1924; Exil, 1942; Neiges, 1944; Pluies, 1944; Vents, 1946; Amers, 1957;

Chroniques, 1960; Oiseaux, 1962; Chant pour un équinoxe, 1975.

Song

Under the bronze leaves a colt was foaled. Came such an one who laid bitter
bay in our hands. Stranger. Who passed. Here comes news of other provinces
to my liking.—‘‘Hail, daughter! under the most considerable of the trees of
the year.’’

***

For the Sun enters the sign of the Lion and the Stranger has laid his finger on
the mouth of the Dead. Stranger. Who laughed. And tells us of an herb. O from
the provinces blow many winds. What ease to our ways, and how the trumpet
rejoices my heart and the feather adept of the scandal of the wing! ‘‘My Soul,
great girl, you had your ways which are not ours.’’

***

Under the bronze leaves a colt had been foaled. Came such an one who laid
this bitter bay in our hands. Stranger. Who passed. Out of the bronze tree comes
a great bruit of voices. Roses and bitumen, gift of song, thunder and fluting in the
rooms. O what ease in our ways, how many gestes to the year, and by the roads of