"
In these days Banville, like Gerard de Nerval in earlier times,
RONSARDISED. The poem 'A la Font Georges,' full of the memories of
childhood, sweet and rich with the air and the hour of sunset, is
written in a favourite metre of Ronsard's. Thus Ronsard says in his
lyrical version of five famous lines of Homer -
"La gresle ni la neige
N'ont tels lieux pour leur siege
Ne la foudre oncques le
Ne devala."
(The snow, and wind, and hail
May never there prevail,
Nor thunderbolt doth fall,
Nor rain at all.)
De Banville chose this metre, rapid yet melancholy, with its sad
emphatic cadence in the fourth line, as the vehicle of his childish
memories:
"O champs pleins de silence,
Ou mon heureuse enfance
Avait des jours encor
Tout files d'or!"
O ma vieille Font Georges,
Vers qui les rouges-gorges
Et le doux rossignol
Prenaient leur vol!
So this poem of the fountain of youth begins, "tout file d'or," and
closes when the dusk is washed with silver -
"A l'heure ou sous leurs voiles
Les tremblantes etoiles
Brodent le ciel changeant
De fleurs d'argent."
The "Stalactites" might detain one long, but we must pass on after
noticing an unnamed poem which is the French counterpart of Keats'
"Ode to a Greek Urn":
"Qu'autour du vase pur, trop beau pour la Bacchante,
La verveine, melee e des feuilles d'acanthe,
Fleurisse, et que plus bas des vierges lentement
S'avancent deux e deux, d'un pas sur et charmant,
Les bras pendants le long de leurs tuniques droites
Et les cheyeux tresses sur leurs tetes etroites.
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