The Volokh Conspiracy
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Poetry Monday!: "Les deux voix" ("The two voices") by Victor Hugo (French)
"Frères ! de ces deux voix étranges, inouïes, / Sans cesse renaissant, sans cesse évanouies, / Qu’écoute l’éternel durant l’éternité, / L’une disait : nature ! et l’autre : humanité !..."
Here's "Les deux voix" (1831) ("The Two Voices"), also known as "Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne" ("What one hears on the mountain") by Victor Hugo (1802-1885). (This is on my YouTube channel, which mostly consists of my Sasha Reads playlist, plus a smattering of law-related songs.) Franz Liszt wrote a symphonic poem on this theme, which you can listen to here.
Avez-vous quelquefois, calme et silencieux,
Monté sur la montagne, en présence des cieux ?
Était-ce aux bords du Sund ? aux côtes de Bretagne ?
Aviez-vous l'océan aux pieds de la montagne ?
Et là, penché sur l'onde et sur l'immensité,
Calme et silencieux, avez-vous écouté ?…
For the rest of my "Sasha Reads" playlist, click here. Past poems are:
- "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
 - "The Pulley" by George Herbert
 - "Harmonie du soir" ("Evening Harmony") by Charles Baudelaire (French)
 - "Dirge Without Music" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 - "Clancy of the Overflow" by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson
 - "Лотова жена" ("Lotova zhena", "Lot's wife") by Anna Akhmatova (Russian)
 - "The Jumblies" by Edward Lear
 - "The Conqueror Worm" by Edgar Allan Poe
 - "Les Djinns" ("The Jinns") by Victor Hugo (French)
 - "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger
 - "When I Was One-and-Twenty" by A.E. Housman
 - "Узник" ("Uznik", "The Prisoner" or "The Captive") by Aleksandr Pushkin (Russian)
 - "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 - "The Song of Wandering Aengus" by William Butler Yeats
 - "Je crains pas ça tellment" ("I'm not that scard about") by Raymond Queneau (French)
 - "The Naming of Cats" by T.S. Eliot
 - "The reticent volcano keeps…" by Emily Dickinson
 - "Она" ("Ona", "She") by Zinaida Gippius (Russian)
 - "Would I Be Shrived?" by John D. Swain
 - "Evolution" by Langdon Smith
 - "Chanson d'automne" ("Autumn Song") by Oscar Milosz (French)
 - "love is more thicker than forget" by e.e. cummings
 - "My Three Loves" by Henry S. Leigh
 - "Я мечтою ловил уходящие тени" ("Ia mechtoiu lovil ukhodiashchie teni", "With my dreams I caught the departing shadows") by Konstantin Balmont (Russian)
 - "Dane-geld" by Rudyard Kipling
 - "Rules and Regulations" by Lewis Carroll
 - "Vers dorés" ("Golden Lines") by Gérard de Nerval (French)
 - "So That's Who I Remind Me Of" by Ogden Nash
 - "The Epic" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
 - "La chambre double" ("The Double Room") by Charles Baudelaire (French)
 - "Медный всадник" ("The Bronze Horseman") by Aleksandr Pushkin (Russian)
 - "Herbst" ("Autumn") by Rainer Maria Rilke (German)
 - "Romance de la luna, luna" ("Ballad of the Moon Moon") by Federico García Lorca (Spanish)
 - "The Four Friends" by A.A. Milne
 - "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by e.e. cummings
 - "Листья" ("Leaves") by Fyodor Tyutchev (Russian)
 - "The Pobble Who Has No Toes" by Edward Lear
 - "The Persian Version" by Robert Graves
 
				
				
				
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