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Page 9
Through the dust and smoke of ages, and through the centuries of wars we
strain our eyes and try to gain a glimpse of thee, Master, in thy good days,
when the Muses walked with thee. We seem to mark thee wandering silent through
some little village, or dreaming in the woods, or loitering among thy lonely
places, or in gardens where the roses blossom among wilder flowers, or on
river banks where the whispering poplars and sighing reeds make answer to the
murmur of the waters. Such a picture hast thou drawn of thyself in the summer
afternoons.
Je m'en vais pourmener tantost parmy la plaine,
Tantost en un village, et tantost en un bois,
Et tantost par les lieux solitaires et cois.
J'aime fort les jardins qui sentent le sauvage,
J'aime le flot de l'eau qui gazou'ille au rivage.
Still, methinks, there was a book in the hand of the grave and learned poet;
still thou wouldst carry thy Horace, thy Catullus, thy Theocritus, through the
gem-like weather of the _Renouveau_, when the woods were enamelled with
flowers, and the young Spring was lodged, like a wandering prince, in his
great palaces hung with green:
Orgueilleux de ses fleurs, enfle' de sa jeunesse,
Loge' comme un grand Prince en ses vertes maisons!
Thou sawest, in these woods by Loire side, the fair shapes of old religion,
Fauns, Nymphs, and Satyrs, and heard'st in the nightingale's music the plaint
of Philomel. The ancient poets came back in the train of thyself and of the
Spring, and learning was scarce less dear to thee than love; and thy ladies
seemed fairer for the names they borrowed from the beauties of forgotten days,
Helen and Cassandra. How sweetly didst thou sing to them thine old morality,
and how gravely didst thou teach the lesson of the Roses! Well didst thou know
it, well didst thou love the Rose, since thy nurse, carrying thee, an infant,
to the holy font, let fall on thee the sacred water brimmed with floating
blossoms of the Rose!
Mignonne, allons voir si la Rose,
Qui ce matin avoit desclose
Sa robe de pourpre au soleil,
A point perdu ceste vespree
Les plis de sa robe pourpree,
Et son teint au votre pareil.
And again,
La belle Rose du Printemps,
Aubert, admoneste les hommes
Passer joyeusement le temps,
Et pendant que jeunes nous sommes,
Esbattre la fleur de nos ans.
In the same mood, looking far down the future, thou sangest of thy lady's age,
the most sad, the most beautiful of thy sad and beautiful lays; for if thy
bees gathered much honey 't was somewhat bitter to taste, as that of the
Sardinian yews. How clearly we see the great hall, the grey lady spinning and
humming among her drowsy maids, and how they waken at the word, and she sees
her spring in their eyes, and they forecast their winter in her face, when she
murmurs ''Twas Ronsard sang of me.'
Winter, and summer, and spring, how swiftly they pass, and how early time
brought thee his sorrows, and grief cast her dust upon thy head.
Adieu ma Lyre, adieu fillettes,
Jadis mes douces amourettes,
Adieu, je sens venir ma fin,
Nul passetemps de ma jeunesse
Ne m'accompagne en la vieillesse,
Que le feu, le lict et le vin.
Wine, and a soft bed, and a bright fire: to this trinity of poor pleasures we
come soon, if, indeed, wine be left to us. Poetry herself deserts us; is it
not said that Bacchus never forgives a renegade? and most of us turn recreants
to Bacchus. Even the bright fire, I fear, was not always there to warm thine
old blood, Master, or, if fire there were, the wood was not bought with thy
book-seller's money. When autumn was drawing in during thine early old age, in
1584, didst thou not write that thou hadst never received a sou at the hands
of all the publishers who vended thy books? And as thou wert about putting
forth the folio edition of 1584, thou didst pray Buon, the bookseller, to give
thee sixty crowns to buy wood withal, and make thee a bright fire in winter
weather, and comfort thine old age with thy friend Gallandius. And if Buon
will not pay, then to try the other book-sellers, 'that wish to take
everything and give nothing.'
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