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Page 8
III.
To Pierre de Ronsard
(Prince of Poets.)
Master and Prince of Poets,--As we know what choice thou madest of a sepulchre
(a choice how ill fulfilled by the jealousy of Fate), so we know well the
manner of thy chosen immortality. In the Plains Elysian, among the heroes and
the ladies of old song, there was thy Love with thee to enjoy her paradise in
an eternal spring.
La' du plaisant Avril la saison imortelle
Sans eschange le suit,
La terre sans labeur, de sa grasse mamelle,
Tout chose y produit;
D'enbas la troupe sainte autrefois amoureuse,
Nous honorant sur tous,
Viendra nous saluer, s'estimant bien-heureuse
De s'accointer de nous.
There thou dwellest, with the learned lovers of old days, with Belleau, and Du
Bellay, and Bai'f, and the flower of the maidens of Anjou. Surely no rumour
reaches thee, in that happy place of reconciled affections, no rumour of the
rudeness of Time, the despite of men, and the change which stole from thy
locks, so early grey, the crown of laurels and of thine own roses. How
different from thy choice of a sepulchre have been the fortunes of thy tomb!
I will that none should break
The marble for my sake,
Wishful to make more fair
My sepulchre.
So didst thou sing, or so thy sweet numbers run in my rude English. Wearied
of Courts and of priories, thou didst desire a grave beside thine own Loire,
not remote from
The caves, the founts that fall
From the high mountain wall,
That fall and flash and fleet,
Wilh silver fret.
Only a laurel tree
Shall guard the grave of me;
Only Apollo's bough
Shall shade me now!
Far other has been thy sepulchre: not in the free air, among the field
flowers, but in thy priory of Saint Cosme, with marble for a monument, and no
green grass to cover thee. Restless wert thou in thy life; thy dust was not to
be restful in thy death. The Huguenots, _ces nouveaux Chre'tiens qui la France
ont pille'e_, destroyed thy tomb, and the warning of the later monument,
ABI, NEFASTE, QUAM CALCAS HUMUM SACRA EST,
has not scared away malicious men. The storm that passed over France a hundred
years ago, more terrible than the religious wars that thou didst weep for, has
swept the column from the tomb. The marble was broken by violent hands, and
the shattered sepulchre of the Prince of Poets gained a dusty hospitality from
the museum of a country town. Better had been the laurel of thy desire, the
creeping vine, and the ivy tree.
Scarce more fortunate, for long, than thy monument was thy memory. Thou hast
not encountered, Master, in the Paradise of Poets, Messieurs Malherbe, De
Balzac, and Boileau--Boileau who spoke of thee as _Ce poe'te orgueilleux
tre'buche' de si haut!_
These gallant gentlemen, I make no doubt, are happy after their own fashion,
backbiting each other and thee in the Paradise of Critics. In their time they
wrought thee much evil, grumbling that thou wrotest in Greek and Latin (of
which tongues certain of them had but little skill), and blaming thy many
lyric melodies and the free flow of thy lines. What said M. de Balzac to M.
Chapelain? 'M. de Malherbe, M. de Grasse, and yourself must be very little
poets, if Ronsard be a great one.' Time has brought in his revenges, and
Messieurs Chapelain and De Grasse are as well forgotten as thou art well
remembered. Men could not always be deaf to thy sweet old songs, nor blind to
the beauty of thy roses and thy loves. When they took the wax out of their
ears that M. Boileau had given them lest they should hear the singing of thy
Sirens, then they were deaf no longer, then they heard the old deaf poet
singing and made answer to his lays. Hast thou not heard these sounds? have
they not reached thee, the voices and the lyres of The'ophile Gautier and
Alfred de Musset? Methinks thou hast marked them, and been glad that the old
notes were ringing again and the old French lyric measures tripping to thine
ancient harmonies, echoing and replying to the Muses of Horace and Catullus.
Returning to Nature, poets returned to thee. Thy monument has perished, but
not thy music, and the Prince of Poets has returned to his own again in a
glorious Restoration.
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