Clair de Lune

"Clair de lune" (French for "Moonlight") is a poem written by French poet Paul Verlaine in 1869. It is the inspiration for the third and most famous movement of Claude Debussy's 1890 Suite bergamasque. Debussy also made two settings of the poem for voice and piano accompaniment. The poem has also been set to music by Gabriel Fauré, Louis Vierne, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Josef Szulc, and Alphons Diepenbrock. Text poeticized English translation (introductory stanza not literal): we gaze upon the moon our dreams sing in revelry her light plays in air and water dazzling plumes her shadow dances in the branches of trees that line the countryside the soul’s countryside; masks and fantasy masks enchanting, playing lutes and dancing, melancholy beneath façades