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La Jeunesse des Morts, by Birds on a Wire (France TΓ©lΓ©visions) | New European Songbook 2018

Birds on a Wire are Dom la Nena and Rosemary Standley.

Birds on a Wire are Dom la Nena and Rosemary Standley. The text is by Anna de Noailles (from Les Forces Γ©ternelles, 1920), with additional texts in German extracts from Die Katrin wird soldat by Adrienne Thomas.

Lyrics:

Spring belongs to those who look like it,
To the adolescent bodies, quickened by pride,
To those whose pleasure, laughter and beautiful eyes
Ignore age, regret and fright.
Oh warlike Nature, where are the youth?
Do you despair when they bleed and falter?
They, whose nature is proud and lively
And shines in the azure like a silver streak.
These prancing children left happy to please
Duty, honnor, the immense atmosphere,
And the great human signals burning on mountaintops.
These prancing children left happy to please.
They lie, now, wrecked, in the soil,
Who will sprout from them dreamy months of May.
Head bowed, let us reflect on this icy mistery,
which Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔland, weeping yet stoic, condones.
Dear Catherine, this war is atrocious.
To kill and destroy.
Turning that which is beautiful or alive into ruins and rot.
It is possible that one should come back.
But for men, and even more so for women,
I am already on the list of the lost.
Perhaps it is a good thing that Mama is dead.
We have unlearned, how to be sons.
Lucien
Spring belongs to those who look like it,
To the adolescent bodies, quickened by pride,
To those whose pleasure, laughter and beautiful eyes
Ignore age, regret and fright.
Oh warlike Nature, where are the youth?
Do you despair when they bleed and falter?
They, whose nature is proud and lively
And shines in the azure like a silver streak.
These prancing children left happy to please
Duty, honnor, the immense atmosphere,
And the great human signals burning on mountaintops.
These prancing children left happy to please.
They lie, now, wrecked, in the soil
Who will sprout from them dreamy months of May.
Head bowed, let us reflect on this icy mistery,
which Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔland, weeping yet stoic, condones.
They were twenty years old, the age when one cannot die.

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Duration:

5 minutes

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