Gotta love the poetry

I know it has once again been a while since my last post, please forgive me all you ravenous readers out there... I have myself been reading a bit, some real good stuff and I'd like to put some quotes of C.S. Lewis' autobiography up. He is such a craftsman of literature; the way his sentences are built and each proposition is strung after another is a skill I can only hope to achieve one day.
But I don't have any Lewis today, what I have is some Hugo and some Rimbaud.
I found my mum's Oxford Book of French Verse while I was down in Orbetello over the holidays and asked her whether I could take it back with me. It has since been a place for me to delve in and dream and marvel at the magnificence of the verses of some of these French poets. It doesn't seem anything like English modern poetry it has such variety of themes, vocabularies and style figures.
I already loved Arthur Rimbaud's writings after having studied them for my baccalauréat, but I discovered Victor Hugo's verse, something spectacular. This one here is one of my favourites, short and beautiful:

Nuits de Juin

L'été, lorsque le jour a fui, de fleurs couverte
La plaine verse au loin un parfum enivrant ;
Les yeux fermés, l'oreille aux rumeurs entrouverte,
On ne dort qu'à demi d'un sommeil transparent.

Les astres sont plus purs, l'ombre paraît meilleure ;
Un vague demi-jour teint le dôme éternel ;
Et l'aube douce et pâle, en attendant son heure,
Semble toute la nuit errer au bas du ciel.

From Rimbaud, however, the classic Ma Bohème makes me dream everytime I read it, or recite it:

Je m'en allais, les poings dans mes poches crevées;
Mon paletot aussi devenait idéal;
J'allais sous le ciel, Muse! et j'étais ton féal;
Oh! là! là! que d'amours splendides j'ai rêvées!

Mon unique culotte avait un large trou.
-Petit Poucet rêveur, j'égrenais dans ma course
Des rimes. Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse.
-Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou.

Et je les écoutais, assis au bord des routes,
Ces bons soirs de septembre où je sentais des gouttes
De rosée à mon front, comme un vin de vigueur;

Où, rimant au milieu des ombres fantastiques,
Comme des lyres, je tirais les élastiques
Des mes souliers blessés, un pied près de mon coeur!

My own stuff, I've spent some good time writing lyrics and music, nothing I'll put up here today, I'll just give a poor and short thing I wrote in January:

Picturesque Morning Hour

Amidst the kettle on and all my yawning
Time slowed down while making breakfast this morning:
What seemed to take thirty minutes only took ten.

Just as well, since a moment before
my ten minute shower actually took more,
it seems like things evened out in the end.

Ciao!