That half-hungry slaves in warmer climates see future wines grow into rich clusters;
Old Scotland does not envy their lot; but, happy and sparkling,
She watches her children born free, and bellicose, drink their whiskey.
What does it matter that the warmer rays of their Phoebus, the perfumes exhale and the beauty charm,
When the unfortunates flood their fragrant woods with their hungry swarms,
Or, chased, dishonor weapons in hungry flocks?
Their rifle is a burden for their shoulder; they can not suffer the smell of powder
Their boldest thought is a fought desire to stay and flee,
Until a shot goes - and here they are, far away, all fishing, trying to save their skin.
But bring a Scotsman from his mountain, give him a glass of his drink in his cheek,
Say that is the will of King George, and here are the enemies:
He thinks of nothing but killing two at once.
No frosty doubt, no heart failure torments him; death comes, he sees it with an intrepid eye;
With a bloody hand he gives her welcome; and when he falls,
Hislast breath exhales in low cheers.
The wise can close their solemn eyes, and raise a philosophical fog,
And look for physical causes in the climate and the season;
But tell me the name of the whiskey in Greek, I will tell you the reason.
Scotland, my respected old mother! Although sometimes you moisten your leather
Until on the heather crop where you sit you lose your water,
(Freedom and whiskey work together!) Take your drop!
Vivamus, mea Lesbia,
atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis.
Soles occidere et
redire possunt ;
nobis cum semel
occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda.
Da mi basia mille,
deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille,
deinde centum.
Dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa,
ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus invidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.
Vivons, ma Lesbie, aimons-nous
et, à tous les commérages des vieillards trop sévères, donnons la valeur d'un sou.
Les rayons du soleil
peuvent mourir et renaître ;
pour nous, une fois que la brève lumière s'est éteinte,
c'est une seule nuit éternelle qu'il faut dormir.
Donne-moi mille baisers,
et puis cent, et puis mille autres,
puis une seconde fois cent,
puis encore mille autres, puis cent.
Ensuite, lorsque nous nous serons embrassés des milliers de fois,
nous brouillerons les comptes pour ne plus les reconnaître,
de peur qu'un esprit malin ne puisse nous jeter le mauvais oeil,
lorsqu'il connaîtra le nombre de nos baisers.
Come and let us live my Deare,
Let us love and never feare,
What the sowrest Fathers say:
Brightest Sol that dies to day
Lives againe as blithe to morrow,
But if we darke sons of sorrow
Set; o then, how long a Night
Shuts the Eyes of our short light!
Then let amorous kisses dwell
On our lips, begin and tell
A Thousand, and a Hundred, score
An Hundred, and a Thousand more,
Till another Thousand smother
That, and that wipe of another.
Thus at last when we have numbred
Many a Thousand, many a Hundred;
Wee’l confound the reckoning quite,
And lose our selves in wild delight:
While our oys so multiply,
As shall mocke the envious eye.
Poem of Cattulus
Richard Crashaw
Claire, after 20 years in Boston, is back in Scotland for Reverend Wakefield's funeral. While her daughter Brianna visits the place alongside Roger, she returns in the footsteps of her past with her love.
On Colluden's moor, she tells him about their daughter and her life without him; at the museum dedicated to the Jacobite revolt, she sees the dragonfly in amber, a wedding gift from Hugh Monroe that she had confided to Jamie before crossing the stones ... She also returns to Lallybroch where so many memories assail her!mille ... Give me a thousand kisses.
Absence entends-là ma protestation
Contre ta puissance,
Ta distance et ta durée :
Fais ce que tu peux pour le changement,
Pour les cœurs sincères et valeureux
L'absence les lie et le temps qui passe les installe.
Qui aime une maîtresse d'une telle qualité,
Son esprit a trouvé
Le terrain d'affection
Au-delà du temps, du lieu et de toute mortalité.
Aux cœurs qui ne peuvent pas varier
L’absence est présente, le temps s’arrête.
Mes sens veulent leur mouvement extérieur
Qui maintenant dans
La raison gagne,
Redoublée par sa notion secrète :
Comme des hommes riches qui prennent du plaisir
Cacher plus que manipuler des trésors.
En absence ce bon moyen que je gagne,
Que je puisse l'attraper
Où personne ne peut la regarder,
Dans un coin proche de mon cerveau :
Là je l'embrasse et l'embrasse,
Et alors profitez-en et personne ne la manque.
Absence, hear thou my protestation
Against thy strength,
Distance and length :
Do what thou canst for alteration,
For hearts of truest mettle
Absence doth still and time doth settle.
Who loves a mistress of such quality,
His mind hath found
Affection's ground
Beyond time, place, and all mortality.
To hearts that cannot vary
Absence is present, Time doth tarry.
My senses want their outward motion
Which now within
Reason doth win,
Redoubled by her secret notion:
Like rich men that take pleasure
In hiding more than handling treasure.
By Absence this good means I gain,
That I can catch her
Where none can watch her,
In some close corner of my brain:
There I embrace and kiss her,
And so enjoy her and none miss her.
Absence
John Donne
In the very first minutes of the episode: the quest: (S01-E05), Claire, facing the lake with which the entire troop halted, declaims the first verses of John Donne's poem: Absence.
At that moment we feel a kind of loneliness hugging him, but Ned Gowan, clerk and advocate of the McKenzie clan, joins her to declaim in unison the end of the first stanza.
While a few meters away from them, the highlanders bicker like kids with rude jokes, the reference to John Donne's poems shows how much Claire is off the mark and needed, particularly at that time, a cultured man to talk to.
Poems
Among other things, she recalls firts verses from Richard Crashaw's poem, which she recited with Jamie. This poem will be again in the spotlight in season 4, episode 6 (the blood of my blood) when Jamie offers a new ring to Claire in which will be engraved a more than significant verse: Da mi basia
Indeed, Roger discovers an article taken from a newspaper published in 1765 in which appears this sentence: 'For since the dawn of time, freedom and whiskey are made to accommodate.' As well as this other sentence: 'you, knight and squires who represent our boroughs and our counties' who are both drawn from this claim that was written in 1786, 21 after this edition.
The fact that the publisher of this article is Alexandre Malcolm, Jamie's other two first names, ends up convincing them.
The Roberts Burns verses from the longest postscript of the lesser name PROTEST AND PRAYER OF THE AUTHOR TO THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCOTLAND written in 1786 are fundamental in the story of Claire and Jamie, not so much for the quality of the work, or even for what it represents from a purely political point of view, but simply because it is these few words that prove to Claire that Jamie survived Culloden and is therefore able to , 20 years later, to join him through time.
Freedom and Whiskey
Robert Burns
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
Dans un bois jaune deux chemins se séparaient
Et désolé de ne pouvoir emprunter l’un et l’autre
Et n’être qu’un voyageur longtemps je demeurai
Et suivis du regard autant que je pouvais
Le premier jusqu’au tournant sous les hêtres ;
Puis je pris le second, presqu’aussi tentant
Et peut-être même plus recommandé
Parce que tout herbeux, à la marche invitant ;
Même si, pour dire vrai, les passants
Les avaient tous deux pareillement usés
L’un et l’autre s’offraient au petit jour
Avec leurs feuilles qu’aucun marcheur n’avait noircies
Je gardais le premier pour un autre parcours
Tout en sachant que de tour en détour
Je ne repasserais probablement jamais ici
C’est en soupirant que je devrais l’avouer
Je ne sais où, il y a bien longtemps
Deux chemins dans un bois se séparaient
J’ai pris des deux le moins fréquenté
Et c’était sans doute le plus important.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves, no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
While they realize that having made the vow to return home, in the 20th century, the stones finally brought them back to Fraser Ridge in the 18th, Brianna and Roger, happy with this unexpected outcome evoke this path that they didn’t ultimately did not borrow and refer to the poem by Robert Frost.
J'ai survécu à la guerre et j'ai beaucoup perdu.
Je sais ce qui vaut, ou non, la peine de se battre
Honneur et le courage sont des points essentiels,
Pour lequel un homme peut tuer, mourir peut-être parfois.
La vie d’un homme émane de sa femme
Et son honneur est sanctifié par son sang
Pour l’amour seul, je traverserais encore le feu
While Claire has just gone through hell, kidnapped, beaten and raped by Lionel Brown and his henchmen ...
While Jamie and his family came to his rescue, mercilessly executing those who tortured this woman whom all love to their measure ...
The people of Fraser Ridge are finally reunited.
A moment of calm, before the coming storm.
I have lived through war and lost much.
I know what's worth the fight, and what is not.
Honor and courage are matters of the bone,
and what a man will kill for, he will sometimes die for, too.
A man's life springs from his woman's bones,
and in her blood is his honor christened.
For the sake of love alone, I would walk through fire again
I have lived through war
Diana Gabaldon
As the storm rumbles in the distance, Jamie and Claire enjoy this moment of calm and peace that they both know is momentary.
The past was brutal, with Jamie's snake bite and Claire's kidnapping and rape.
As for the future, it looks bloody with the inevitable revolution.
Their courage is rooted in their knowledge and it is a good time for Jamie to quote Thucydide, a renowned Greek historian, who we suspect has studied the writings with interest.
The bravest
Thucydide
But, the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger, and yet go out to meet it.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats
This poem is quoted three times in the saga. It's an important thread, and this poem starts from Frank, who recites it often, seeing Claire gardening, then Brianna and Claire recite it and thus teach it to Jamie (although the poem is written a century later) and finally Jamie appropriates it and makes it his own.
Volume 4, chapter 43
Dialogue between Brianna and Jamie as they watch Claire tend to her garden.
Volume 7 chapter 12
Claire, still in her garden, as she sees a snake passing by the place where Malva was murdered
Volume 9 chapter 141
Jamie remembers the poem Claire recited to him.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.