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Avant qu'Amour du Chaos ocieux
Ouvrit le sein qui couvoit la lumiere,
Avec la terre, avec l'onde premiere,

Sans art, sans forme etoient brouillez les cieux.
Tel mon esprit de rien industrieux,

Dedans mon corps, lorde et grosse matiere,
Erroit sans forme et sans figure entiere,
Quand l'arc d'Amour le perca par tes yeux.
Amour rendit ma nature parfaite,

Pure par lui mon essence s'est faite,
Il m'en donna la vie et le pouvoir.
Il echauffa tout mon sang de sa flame,
Et m'emportant de son vol, fit mouvoir
Avecques lui mes pensées et mon ame.

Or ever Love drew forth the slumbering light,
That in the bosom of old Chaos lay,

Earth, sea, and sky, without his primal ray,
Were in blank ruin sunk and formless night:
So, whelm'd in sloth, erewhile, my heavy spright
Did in a dull and senseless body stray,

Scarce life enough to stir the lumpish clay,
Till from thine eyes Love's arrow pierc'd my sight.
Then was I quicken'd; and, by Love inform❜d,
My being to a new perfection came:

His influence my blood and spirits warm'd;
And, as I mounted this low world above,
Following in thought and soul his sacred flame,
Love was my being, and my essence Love.

The fifty-ninth is an imitation of Bembo.
freedom in the copy than in the original.
Comme un chevreuil, quand le printemps
detruit

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Du froid hyver la poignante gelée,
Pour mieux brouter la fueille emmiellée,
Hors de son bois avec l'aube s'enfuit :
E seul, e seur, loin de chiens et de bruit,
Or sur un mont, or dans une valée,
Or près d'une onde à l'escart recelée,
Libre s'egaye où son pied le conduit:
De rets ne d'arcs sa liberté n'a crainte ;
Sinon alors que sa vie est atteinte
D'un trait sanglant, que le tient en lan-
geur.

Ainsi j'allois sans espoir de dommage,

Le jour qu'un oeil sur l'Avril de mon age
Tira d'un coup mille traits en mon coeur.

Si

There is more elasticity and

come suol, poi che'l verno aspro e rio,
Parte e da loco alle stagion migliori,
Uscir col giorno la cervetta fuori
Del suo dolce boschetto almo natio :
Ed or su per un colle, or lungo un rio
Lontana dalle case e dai pastori,
Gir secura pascendo erbetta e fiori
Ovunque più la porta il suo desio :
Ne teme di saetta o d'altro inganno,
Se non quand' ella è colta in mezzo il
fianco

Da buon arcier che di nascosto scocchi.
Cosi senza temer futuro affanno

Moss' io, Donna, quel dì che bei vostri occhi

M'impiagar lasso tutto 'l lato manco.

As when fresh spring apparels wood and plain,
Forth from his native lair, a tender fawn
Issues alone and careless, if the dawn
Gin the grey east with flecker'd crimson stain ;
And all unheeding of the hunter's train,
Wherever through his roving fancy drawn,
By lake or river, hill or flowery lawn,

Sports with light foot, and feeds and sports again;

Nor aught he fears from meshes or from bow,
Till to his liver a fleet arrow sped

Has pierced, and panting on the earth he lies:

In my life's April thus wont I to go,

Of harm unfearing, where my fancy led,

Ere the dart reach'd me from her radiant eyes.

The hundred and sixty-second, to Baïf, proves his high esteem for that writer, whom we have seen so much disparaged.

Pendant, Baïf, que tu frapes au but
De la vertu, qui n'a point de seconde,
Et qu'a longs traits tu t'enyvres de l'onde,
Que l'Ascrean entre les Muses but;
Ici banni, ou le mont de Sabut

Charge de vins son epaule feconde,
Pensif, je voy la fuite vagabonde
Du Loir qui traine en la mer son tribut.
Ores un antre, ores un bois sauvage,
Ores me plait le secret d'un rivage,
Pour essayer de tromper mon ennui ;
Mais je ne puis, quoique seul je me tienne,
Faire qu'Amour m'accompagnant ne vienne
Parler a moi, et moi toujours a lui.

The conclusion of this is from Petrarch :

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where the variety in the metre gives the Italian poet a striking advantage over Ronsard.

Baïf, who, second in our age to none,

Dost with free step to Virtue's summit mount,
While thou allay'st thine ardour at the fount
Of Ascra, where the Muses met their son ;
An exile I, where sloping to the sun

Rich Sabut lifts his grape-empurpled mount,
Am fain to waste mine hours, and pensive count
Loire's wand'ring waves as ocean-ward they run.
And oft, to shun my cares, the haunt I change;
Now linger in some nook the stream beside,
Now seek a wild wood, now a cavern dim.
But all avails not: whereso'er I range,

Love still attends, and ever at my side
Conversing with me walks, and I with him.

There is more nature and passion in the two hundred and fourteenth sonnet, which begins

Quand je te voy, discourant à par toy, than I have observed in any of the others.

The Second Book of his Amours,

which contains, besides other short poems, eighty sonnets, is devoted to the praises of his Marie, the last thirteen being written after her death. It is confessedly in a more familiar style than the First Book; yet is filled with images drawn from the heathen mythology.

J'aime la fleur de Mars, j'aime la belle rose,
L'une qui est sacrée a Venus la deesse,

L'autre qui a le nom de ma belle Maistresse,
Pour qui troublé d'esprit en paix je ne repose.
J'aime trois oiselets, l'un qui sa plume arrose
De la pluye de May, et vers le ciel se dresse:
L'autre qui veuf au bois lamente sa destresse :
L'autre qui pour son fils mille versets compose.
J'aime un pin de Bourgueil, où Venus appendit
Ma jeune liberté, quand pris elle rendit

Mon coeur, que doucement un bel oeil emprisonne.
J'aime un beau laurier de Phebus l'arbrisseau,
Dont ma belle Maistresse, en pliant un rameau

Lié de ses cheveux, me fit une couronne.

Le Second Livre des Amours. Son. 28.

Two flowers I love, the March-flower and the rose,
The lovely rose that is to Venus dear,

The March-flower that of her the name doth bear,
Who will not leave my spirit in repose:

Three birds I love; one, moist with May-dew, goes
To dry his feathers in the sun-shine clear;
One for his mate laments throughout the year,
And for his child the other wails his woes:
And Bourgueil's pine I love, where Venus hung,
For a proud trophy on the darksome bough,
Ne'er since releas'd, my youthful liberty:
And Phoebus' tree love I, the laurel tree,
Of whose fair leaves my mistress, when I sung,
Bound with her locks a garland for my brow.

In one of his odes (Book v. O.xi.) he again expresses his preference for these two flowers, the rose, and the violet, which he calls the flower of March, and supposes to bear the name of his Marie. That the lark was his favourite bird, appears from a passage in his Gayetez:

Alouette,

Ma doucelette mignolette, Qui plus qu'un rossignol me plais Qui chante en un bocage epais. After a few sonnets and madrigals on another lady, whom he calls Astree, and of whom we are not told whether she was of the Queen Mother's choosing or his own, we proceed to his two books of sonnets on Helene. These are a hundred and forty-two in number. He begins with swearing to her by her brothers Castor and Pollux; by the vine that enlaced the elm; by the meadows and woods, then sprouting into verdure (it was the first day of May); by the young Spring, eldest son of Nature; by the crystal that rolled along the streams; and by the nightingale, the miracle of birds, that she should be his last venture.

Ce premier jour de May, Helene je vous jure

Par Castor, par Pollux, vos deux freres jumeaux,

Par la vigne enlassée à l'entour des or

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Whether she was so or not, does not, I think, appear; but it was full time, for he was about fifty years old. There is, however, another short book, entitled Amours Diverses; and besides this, a large gleaning of sonnets and odes, many of them on the same subject, which he did not think worth gathering; but which his editors were careful enough to pick up and store along with the rest. Amongst these are some which for more reasons than one I cannot recommend to the notice of my reader. We will pass them, and go on to his odes.

These may be divided into two classes; some, in which he has imitated the ancients; and others, that are the offspring of his own feelings and fancy. In the former, unhappily the larger number, Anacreon, Pindar, Callimachus, Horace, are all laid under contribution by turns, and that with no sparing hand. It was in his ability to transfuse the spirit of the old Theban into Gallic song, or as he called it, to Pindarise, that he most prided himself, and it was here that he most egregiously failed.

Si dès mon enfance
Le premier en France
J'ai Pindarisé,
De telle entreprise
Heureusement prise
Je me voy prisé.

Nothing can well be more unlike
the poet, whom he boasts to have in-
troduced into his own language,
As for
than this tripping measure.
the music of Pindar, indeed, that
was out of the question. It was not
in the power of the French, nor
perhaps of any other language, to

At the beginning of the next century, there was a translation of all Pindar into French, partly in prose and partly in verse. It is not mentioned by Heyne when he is recounting the versions that have been made of that writer; nor have I seen any notice of it elsewhere. I will add the title of the book, and a specimen of it, taken from the beginning, which will be enough to satisfy any reader's curiosity :-Le Pindare Thebain.

return even a faint echo of it. But those who are acquainted with that poet, know that another of his distinctions consists, not only in the hardiness of his metaphors, but in the no less light than firm touch with which he handles them. One instance will be enough to show how ill Ronsard has represented this characteristic of his model. Pindar, speaking of a man who had not, through neglect or forgetfulness, his task to do when it ought to have been already done, says, that "he did not come, bringing with him Excuse, the daughter of Afterthought;" or literally, "of the late-minded Epimetheus."

Ὃς οὐ τὴν Ἐπιμαθέος
*Αγων ὀψινόου θυγατέρα Πρόσ
-φασιν Βαττιδῶν
̓Αφίκετο δόμους.

Pyth. V. 38.

How has Ronsard contrived to spoil this in his application of it to the Constable Montmorency!

Qui seul mettoit en evidence
Les saints tresors de sa prudence,
Ne s'est jamais accompagné
Du sot enfaut d'Epimethée,
Mais de celuy de Promethée,
Par longues ruses enseigné.

L. i. O. i. Strophe 6. Another of Pindar's excellences are those yvapai, sentences, or maxims, the effect of which results not more from their appositeness than their compression. One of these is, that "Envy is better than pity," pέoowv

yap oirripμov póvoc, which Ronsard has left indeed no longer one of the dark sayings of the wise, but has made almost ludicrous by the light in which he has placed it :C'est grand mal d'etre miserable, Mais c'est grand bien d'etre envié. L. i. O. x. Strophe 22. Sometimes on Pindar's stock he engrafts a conceit, than which no fruit can be more alien to the parent tree.

Thus, of a passage in the Second Pythian, v. 125 to 130, in which the Theban appears to intimate, as he does elsewhere more plainly, that he expects a reward for his song; Ronsard avails himself to tell his patron, that he shall see how liberally his praises will sound, if "a present gilds the chord,"

Prince je t'envoye cette ode,
Trafiquant mes vers à la mode
Que le marchand baille son bien,
Troque pour troq': toy qui es riche,
Toy Roy des biens, ne soit point chiche
De changer ton present au mien.
Ne te lasse point de donner,
Et tu verras comme j'accorde
L'honneur que je promets sonner,
Quand un present dore ma corde.
L. i. O,i. Antis. 8.

This is truly anti-pindaric. Of that other class of odes, which appear more like the overflowings of his own mind, and which have a better chance of pleasing the English reader at least, I would point out the following:-in the first book, the

Traduction meslce de vers et de prose. Par le Sieur Lagausie. 1626. 8vo. Paris. Chez

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La force de chasque element

Paroit par leurs effects contraires,

Mais le moindre de l'eau surmonte absolument

Tous ceux de ses trois freres.

Parmy les differens metaux

Des thresors d'un superbe avare

L'esclat de l'or fait treuver faux

L'esclat des autres le plus rare,

Brillant contre eux comme un flambeau qui luit

Dans les tenebres de la nuict,

Si tant est que mon coeur se pique

De soin de descrire un combat

Dont tous les Grecs vont voir l'esbat,

Il faut parler de l'Olympique.

D'autant que comme on voit que l'astre du soleil
Allumant un beau jour a perruque espandue

Esclaire la vaste estendue

De l'air sans avoir son pareil.

Je ne sçaurois non plus treuver un tournay comparable à l'Olympique, &c.

seventeenth; in the second, the cle-
venth, to his preceptor Jean Dorat,
and the eighteenth to his lacquey;
in the third, the eighth to the Foun-
tain Bellerie, the twenty-first to
Gaspar D'Auvergne, and the two
following it; in the fourth book, ode
the fourth, on the choice of his burial-
place, together with the eighteenth
and nineteenth, which I subjoin with
a translation; and in the fifth and
last book, odes eleven and seven-
teen.

Dieu vous gard, messagers fidelles
Du printemps, vistes arondelles,

Hupes, cocus, rossignolets,
Tourtres, et vous oiseaux sauvages,
Qui de cent sortes de ramages

Animez les bois verdelets.

Dieu vous gard, belles paquerettes,
Belles roses, belles fleurettes,

Et vous boutons jadis cognus
Du sang d'Ajax et de Narcisse:
Et vous thym, anis, et melisse,
Vous soyez les bien revenus.
Dieu vous gard, troupe diaprée
De papillons, qui par la prée

Les douces herbes suçotez;
Et vous nouvel essain d'abeilles,
Qui les fleurs jaunes et vermeilles
De votre bouche baisotez:

Cent mille fois je resaluë
Votre belle et douce venue:

O que j'aime ceste saison,
Et ce doux caquet de rivages
Au prix des vents et des orages
Qui m'enfermoient en la maison.
L. iv. O. xviii.

God shield ye, heralds of the spring,
Ye faithful swallows fleet of wing,
Houps, cuckoos, nightingales,
Turtles, and every wilder bird,

That make your hundred chirpings heard
Through the green woods and dales.

God shield ye, Easter daisies all,
Fair roses, buds and blossoms small;
And ye, whom erst the gore
Of Ajax and Narciss did print,
Ye wild thyme, anise, balm, and mint,
I welcome ye once more.

God shield ye, bright embroider'd train
Of butterflies, that, on the plain,
Of each sweet herblet sip;
And ye new swarm of bees that go
Where the pink flowers and yellow grow,
To kiss them with your lip.

A hundred thousand times I call-
A hearty welcome on ye all:

This season how I love!

This merry din on every shore,

For winds and storms, whose sullen roar
Forbade my steps to rove.

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