“ Fair white bird, what song art thou singing
In wintry weather of lands o’er sea?
Dear white bird, what way art thou winging,
Where no grass grows, and no green tree?
I looked at the far off fields and grey,
There grew no tree but the cypress tree,
That bears sad fruits with the flowers of May,
And whoso looks on it, woe is he.
And whoso eats of the fruit thereof
Has no more sorrow, and no more love;
And who sets the same in his garden stead,
In a little space he is waste and dead. ”

“ And face beloved of Mirandola.
The Virgin then, to comfort him and stay,
Kissed the thin cheek, and kissed the lips acold,
The lips unkissed of women many a day.
Nor she alone, for queens of the old creed,
Like rival queens that tended Arthur, there
Were gathered, Venus in her mourning weed,
Pallas and Dian; wise, and pure, and fair
Was he they mourned, who living did not wrong
One altar of its dues of wine and song. ”

“ My loving heart allure.
I’ll bear your yoke, that’s light enough,
And to the Elysian plain,
When we are dead of love, my love,
One boat shall bear us twain.
They’ll flock around you, fleet and fair,
All true loves that have been,
And you of all the shadows there,
Shall be the shadow queen.
Ah shadow-loves, and shadow-lips! ”

“ Fleet to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers,
One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold.
Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spill
The cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet;
My heart has far more fire than you have frost to chill,
My soul more love than you can make my soul forget. ”

“ The fates have slain, and her sweet soul reposes;
And tears I bring, and sighs, and on her tomb
Pour milk, and scatter buds of many a bloom,
That dead, as living, she may be with roses.
p. 35SHADOWS OF HIS LADY. Jacques Tahureau, 1527–1555.
Within the sand of what far river lies
The gold that gleams in tresses of my Love?
What highest circle of the Heavens above
Is jewelled with such stars as are her eyes?
And where is the rich sea whose coral vies
With her red lips, that cannot kiss enough?
What dawn-lit garden knew the rose, whereof
The fled soul lives in her cheeks’ rosy guise? ”

“ Of all sad things, and fair, where sunsets glow,
When through the scent of heather, faint and low,
The weak wind whispers to the day that dies.
From all sweet art, and out of all ‘old rhyme,’
Thine eyes and lips are light and song to me ”

“ Ἔλθῃ καὶ θάνατος,τὰ τ’ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώποισι πέλονται.
Odyssey, xiii. 59.
My prayer an old prayer borroweth,
Of ancient love and memory—
‘Do thou farewell, till Eld and Death,
That come to all men, come to thee.’
Gently as winter’s early breath,
Scarce felt, what time the swallows flee,
To lands whereof no man knoweth
Of summer, over land and sea;
So with thy soul may summer be,
Even as the ancient singer saith,
‘Do thou farewell, till Eld and Death,
That come to all men, come to thee.’
p. ”

“ So clear thy fire of song, so early chilled,
So brief, so bright thy life that gaily met
Death, for thy Death came hand in hand with Love.
p. 160FRANÇOIS VILLON. 1450. List, all that love light mirth, light tears, and all
That know the heart of shameful loves, or pure;
That know delights depart, desires endure,
A fevered tribe of ghosts funereal,
Widowed of dead delights gone out of call ”

“ Thou knowest, Moon, the bitter power of Love;
’Tis told how shepherd Pan found ways to move,
For little price, thy heart; and of your grace,
Sweet stars, be kind to this not alien fire,
Because on earth ye did not scorn desire,
Bethink ye, now ye hold your heavenly place.
p. 28TO HIS YOUNG MISTRESS. Ronsard, 1550.
Fair flower of fifteen springs, that still
Art scarcely blossomed from the bud,
Yet hast such store of evil will,
A heart so full of hardihood,
Seeking to hide in friendly wise
The mischief of your mocking eyes. ”

“ The petals of her purple flowers
All have faded, fallen, died;
Sad Nature, mother ruinous,
That seest thy fair child perish thus
’Twixt matin song and even tide.
p. 26Hear me, my darling, speaking sooth,
Gather the fleet flower of your youth,
Take ye your pleasure at the best;
Be merry ere your beauty flit,
For length of days will tarnish it
Like roses that were loveliest.
p. 27TO THE MOON. Ronsard, 1550. ”

“ Many of the sonnets in which he ‘petrarquizes,’ retain the faded odour of the roses he loved; and his songs have fire and melancholy and a sense as of perfume from ‘a closet long to quiet vowed, with mothed and dropping arras hung.’ Ronsard’s great fame declined when is p. 4Malherbe came to ‘bind the sweet influences of the Pleiad,’ but he has been duly honoured by the newest school of French poetry. ”

“ When laughter of lips with laughing eyes was wed.
Their strife the Fates have closed, with stern control,
The earth holds her fair body, and her soul
An angel with glad angels triumpheth;
Love has no more that he can do; desire
Is buried, and my heart a faded fire,
And for Death’s sake, I am in love with Death.
p. 34HIS LADY’S TOMB. Ronsard, 1550. ”

“ Nothing is known of Villon’s birth or death, and only too much of his life. In his poems the ancient forms of French verse are animated with the keenest sense of personal emotion, of love, of melancholy, of mocking despair, and of repentance for a life passed in taverns and prisons.
III. Joachim Du Bellay, 1525–1560. The exact date of Du Bellay’s birth is unknown. He was certainly a little younger than Ronsard, who was born in September, 1524, although an attempt has been made to prove that his birth took place in 1525, as a compensation from Nature to France for the battle of Pavia. ”

“ And laughter from the heart’s last sorrow wrung,
When half-repentance but makes evil whole,
And prayer that cannot help wears out the soul.
p. 161PIERRE RONSARD. 1560. Master, I see thee with the locks of grey,
Crowned by the Muses with the laurel-wreath;
I see the roses hiding underneath,
Cassandra’s gift; she was less dear than they.
Thou, Master, first hast roused the lyric lay,
The sleeping song that the dead years bequeath,
Hast sung sweet answer to the songs that breathe
Through ages, and through ages far away. ”

“ About the gate, or labour at the oar.
p. 18A SONNET TO HEAVENLY BEAUTY. Du Bellay, 1550.
If this our little life is but a day
In the Eternal,—if the years in vain
Toil after hours that never come again,—
If everything that hath been must decay,
Why dreamest thou of joys that pass away,
My soul, that my sad body doth restrain?
Why of the moment’s pleasure art thou fain?
Nay, thou hast wings,—nay, seek another stay.
There is the joy whereto each soul aspires,
And there the rest that all the world desires,
And there is love, and peace, and gracious mirth ”

“ To soothe us, sleep more terrible than day,
Where dead delights, and fair lost faces stray,
To make us weary at our wakening;
And of that long-lost path to the Divine
We dream, as some Greek shepherd erst might sing,
Half credulous, of easy Proserpine
And of the lands that lie ‘beneath the day’s decline.’
p. 154THE SHADE OF HELEN.
Some say that Helen went never to Troy, but abode in Egypt; for the Gods, having made in her semblance a woman out of clouds and shadows, sent the same to be wife to Paris. For this shadow then the Greeks and Trojans slew each other. ”

“ Shredded and flown, play things for the wind’s play-time,
p. 43We dream that all white butterflies above,
Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love,
And leave their lady mistress in despair,
To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair,
Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies
Flutter, and float, and change to Butterflies.
p. 44MORE STRONG THAN TIME. Victor Hugo.
Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet,
Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,
Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it,
And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade ”

“ As a poet Du Bellay had the start, by a few mouths, of Ronsard; his Recueil was published in 1549. The question of priority in the new style of poetry caused a quarrel, which did not long separate the two singers. Du Bellay is perhaps the most interesting of the Pleiad, that company of Seven, who attempted to reform French verse, by inspiring it with the enthusiasm of the Renaissance. His book p. 3L’Illustration de la langue Française is a plea for the study of ancient models and for the improvement of the vernacular. ”

“ An illness which produced total deafness made him a scholar and poet, as in another age and country it might have made him a saint and an ascetic. With all his industry, and almost religious zeal for art, he is one of the poets who make themselves, rather than are born singers. His epic, the Franciade, is as tedious as other artificial epics, and his odes are almost unreadable. We are never allowed to forget that he is the poet who read the Iliad through in three days. ”

“ Sings, and her song is full of the sea’s moan,
And wild with dread, and love of Proserpine;
And whoso once has listened to her, he
His whole life long is slave to her alone.
p. 148A LA BELLE HÉLÈNE. AFTER RONSARD.
More closely than the clinging vine
About the wedded tree,
Clasp thou thine arms, ah, mistress mine!
About the heart of me.
Or seem to sleep, and stoop your face
Soft on my sleeping eyes,
Breathe in your life, your heart, your grace,
Through me, in kissing wise. ”

“ That wash the lands where laughter, tears, and sighs,
Make life,—the lands beneath the blue of common skies.
But in the west is a mysterious sea,
(What sails have seen it, or what shipmen known?)
With coasts enchanted where the Sirens be,
With islands where a Goddess walks alone,
And in the cedar trees the magic winds make moan
p. 102Eastward the human cares of house and home,
Cities, and ships, and unknown Gods, and loves ”

“ The faint light fade, and the wan stars quiver,
Twain grown one in the solitude.
p. 99HESPEROTHEN.
By the example of certain Grecian mariners, who, being safely returned from the war about Troy, leave yet again their old lands and gods, seeking they know not what, and choosing neither to abide in the fair Phæacian island, nor to dwell and die with the Sirens, at length end miserably in a desert country by the sea, is set forth the Vanity of Melancholy. And by the land of Phæacia is to be understood the place of Art and of fair Pleasures ”

“ VI. Jacques Tahureau, 1527–1555. The amorous poetry of Jacques Tahureau has the merit, rare in his, or in any age, of being the real expression of passion. His brief life burned itself away before he had exhausted the lyric effusion of his youth. ‘Le plus beau gentilhomme de son siècle, et le plus dextre à toutes sortes de gentillesses,’ died at the age of twenty-eight, fulfilling the presentiment which tinges, but scarcely saddens his poetry.
VII. Jean Passerat, 1534–1602. Better known as a political satirist than as a poet. ”

“ The flowers set upon their hair.
Their old sweet song came down the wind,
Remembered music waxing strong,
Ah now no need of cords to bind,
No need had we of Orphic song.
It once had seemed a little thing,
To lay our lives down at their feet,
That dying we might hear them sing,
And dying see their faces sweet;
p. 113But now, we glanced, and passing by,
No care had we to tarry long;
Faint hope, and rest, and memory
Were more than any Siren’s song.
p. 114CIRCE’S ISLE REVISITED. Ah, Circe, Circe! in the wood we cried;
Ah, Circe, Circe! but no voice replied ”

“ Wind-flowers too.
p. 15Ah, winnow with sweet breath,
Winnow the holt and heath,
Round this retreat;
Where all the golden morn
We fan the gold o’ the corn,
In the sun’s heat.
p. 16A VOW TO HEAVENLY VENUS. Du Bellay, 1500
We that with like hearts love, we lovers twain,
New wedded in the village by thy fane,
Lady of all chaste love, to thee it is
We bring these amaranths, these white lilies,
A sign, and sacrifice; may Love, we pray,
Like amaranthine flowers, feel no decay ”

“ With their lost ladies, hand in hand;
Ah, Love, how fireless are their eyes,
How pale their lips that kiss and smile!
So mine must be in little while
If thou wilt kiss me in such wise.
p. 31OF HIS LADY’S OLD AGE. Ronsard, 1550
When you are very old, at evening
You’ll sit and spin beside the fire, and say,
Humming my songs, ‘Ah well, ah well-a-day! ”

“ In the new world, where all things are made new?
p. 163THE DEATH OF MIRANDOLA. 1494.
‘The Queen of Heaven appeared, comforting him and promising that he should not utterly die.’—Thomas More, Life of Piens, Earl of Mirandola. ”