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JACQUES TAHUREAU. 1530.
Ah thou! that, undeceived and unregretting,
Saw'st Death so near thee on the flowery way,
And with no sigh that life was near the setting,
Took'st the delight and dalliance of the day,
Happy thou wert, to live and pass away
Ere life or love had done thee any wrong;
Ere thy wreath faded, or thy locks grew grey,
Or summer came to lull thine April song,
Sweet as all shapes of sweet things unfulfilled,
Buds bloomless, and the broken violet,
The first spring days, the sounds and scents thereof;
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.
FRANCOIS 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;
List, all that deem the glory of the rose
Is brief as last year's suns, or last year's snows
The new suns melt from off the sundial.
All this your master Villon knew and sung;
Despised delights, and faint foredone desire;
And shame, a deathless worm, a quenchless fire;
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.
PIERRE 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.
Yea, and in thee the pulse of ancient passion
Leaped, and the nymphs amid the spring-water
Made bare their lovely limbs in the old fashion,
And birds' song in the branches was astir.
Ah, but thy songs are sad, thy roses wan,
Thy bees have fed on yews Sardinian.
GERARD DE NERVAL.
Of all that were thy prisons--ah, untamed,
Ah, light and sacred soul!--none holds thee now;
No wall, no bar, no body of flesh, but thou
Art free and happy in the lands unnamed,
About whose gates, with weary wings and maimed,
Thou most wert wont to linger, entering there
A moment, and returning rapt, with fair
Tidings that men or heeded not or blamed;
And they would smile and wonder, seeing where
Thou stood'st, to watch light leaves, or clouds, or wind,
Dreamily murmuring a ballad air,
Caught from the Valois peasants; dost thou find
Old prophecies fulfilled now, old tales true
In the new world, where all things are made new?
THE 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.]
Strange lilies came with autumn; new and old
Were mingling, and the old world passed away,
And the night gathered, and the shadows grey
Dimmed the kind eyes and dimmed the locks of gold,
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.
THE END.
Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, with other Poems, by Andrew Lang
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