'Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole'

I'm writing an essay about the use of song in TS Eliot's "The Waste Land" and I'm not quite sure how to take this. "And Oh, the voices of children, singing in the..." All I can figure out for that last word is dome?! Unfortunately, that word seems to be the important one in the sentence, given that the poem is about a fragmented, barren, waste of a society... I can't really look at the quotation in too much depth, unless I get what he means by dome.

I do know it's a quotation from a poem called 'Parsifal' by Paul Verlaine, which did give me a fair bit of insight, but which I won't link here for fear of offending.

So... alternate translations for 'coupole'? Or am I just being dense? Is there an obvious symbolic meaning for "dome" that I'm stupidly, un-English Student-ly missing?

I hope someone can help in any case...

Try the following wikipedia link for explanation of cupola which is a a dome-like structure in architecture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola

Maybe the children are singing from the top of a building in a cupola - the wikipedia link gives a picture of one example.

Ahh, I see, i guess it would fit in with the images of ruined, crumbling architecture in the poem, I hadn't thought of anything like that... thanks.

Without looking it up, I think there's the English word "cupola", which is more an onion shape than a dome (e.g. on the roof of Brighton Pavilion).

Here's my own French-language query: can anyone tell me what a Lesquercarde is? It's one of the Airs de danse in Delibes' 'Le roi s'amuse', which we in the Exeter Recorder Orchestra are performing next Saturday.

I didn't know the word, it seems pretty obscure. I found this though:

Scheurleer, Uitgave XXVII, p. 8-9. — M. Scheiuleer conjecttore
que le mot Lesquercarde vient pevit-être (sic) du mot esquer (remuer, secouer),
à moins qu'il ne soit une corruption de Cascarda, un genre de danse.
La Cascarda est une danse à trois temps, à rythme pointé comme celui de
la moresca ou de la gigue. Il n'y a aucune communauté thématique entre
la pavane Lesquercade et les cascarde du Ballarino (Cf. édition moderne
de M. Chilesotti, vol. I de la Bihlioteca di rarità musicali, Milan, Ricordi).

Interesting, but Delibes' Lesquercarde is in 4/4...

Too tired to think coherently but a "coupole" is a part of a church (if that's any help).

I'd go with Cupola unless you can give us any more context - but when I hear the word Coupole - I see a large slightly dome-y shape - think St Paul's Cathedral.

If you're talking about a broken down barn, it may be ironic - it could be talking about the central bit that remains standing and perhaps contrasting the semantic ideal of coupole with the tragic reality of une grange en ruine - this kind of ironic device was very popular in some French poetry.

As for lesquercade - it makes me think of a leaping around mouvement - the 'ade' ending gives me the sensation of 'in the fashion of / based upon' and the lesquer bit sounds like it might be about shaking the body or leaping around.

According to the medieval and renaissance music society of Paris, it's a form of dance popular in the renaissance. Hope that helps.