III. To Pierre De Ronsard - Page 2

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 wclI
remembered. Men could not ahvays 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.

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