Haste, ye light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile;
Love's panthers sleep 'mid roses, as of yore:
'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'
ENVOI.
"Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.
All, singing birds, your happy music pour;
Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile;
Flit to these ancient gods we still adore:
'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'"
Alas! the mists that veil the shore of our Cythera are not the
summer haze of Watteau, but the smoke and steam of a commercial
time.
It is as a lyric poet that we have studied M. De Banville. "Je ne
m'entends qu'e la meurique," he says in his ballad on himself; but
he can write prose when he pleases.
It is in his drama of Gringoire acted at the Theatre Francais, and
familiar in the version of Messrs. Pollock and Besant, that M. De
Banville's prose shows to the best advantage. Louis XI. is supping
with his bourgeois friends and with the terrible Olivier le Daim.
Two beautiful girls are of the company, friends of Pierre Gringoire,
the strolling poet. Presently Gringoire himself appears. He is
dying of hunger; he does not recognise the king, and he is promised
a good supper if he will recite the new satirical "Ballade des
Pendus," which he has made at the monarch's expense. Hunger
overcomes his timidity, and, addressing himself especially to the
king, he enters on this goodly matter:
"Where wide the forest boughs are spread,
Where Flora wakes with sylph and fay,
Are crowns and garlands of men dead,
All golden in the morning gay;
Within this ancient garden grey
Are clusters such as no mail knows,
Where Moor and Soldan bear the sway:
This is King Louis' orchard close!
"These wretched folk wave overhead,
With such strange thoughts as none may say;
A moment still, then sudden sped,
They swing in a ring and waste away.
Pages:
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90