Letters to Dead Authors | Page 8

and the flower of the maidens of Anjou.
Surely no runmm' reaches thee, in that happy place of reconciled
affections, no rumour of the rudeness of Time, the despite of men, and
the change which stole from thy locks, so early grey, the crown of

laurels and of thine own roses. How different from thy choice of a
sepulchre have been the fortunes of thy tomb!
I will that none should break The marble for my sake, Wishful to make
more fair My sepulchre.
So didst thou sing, or so thy sweet numbers run in my rude English.
Wearied of Courts and of priories, thou didst desire a grave beside
thine own Loire, not remote from
The caves, the founts that fall From the high mountain wall, That fall
and flash and fleet, Wilh silver fret.
Only a laurel tree Shall guard the grave of me; Only Apollo's bough
Shall shade me now!
Far other has been thy sepulchre: not in the free air, among the field
flowers, but in thy priory of Saint Cosme, with marble for a monument,
and no green grass to cover thee. Restless wert thou in thy life; thy dust
was not to be restful in thy death. The
Huguenots,cesnouveauxChre'tiensquilaFrance ontpille'e, destroyed thy
tomb, and the warning of the later monument,
ABI, NEFASTE, QUAM CALCAS HUMUM SACRA EST,
has not scared away malicious men. The storm that passed over France
a hundred years ago, more terrible than the religious wars that thou
didst weep for, has swept the column from the tomb. The marble was
broken by violent hands, and the shattered sepulchre of the Prince of
Poets gained a dusty hospitality from the museum of a country town.
Better had been the laurel of thy desire, the creeping vine, and the ivy
tree.
Scarce more fortunate, for long, than thy monument was thy memory.
Thou hast not encountered, Master, in the Paradise of Poets, Messieurs
Malherbe, De Balzac, and Boileau--Boileau who spoke of thee as
Cepoe'teorgueilleux tre'buche'desihaut!

These gallant gentlemen, I make no doubt, are happy after their own
fashion, backbiting each other and thee in the Paradise of Critics. In
their time they wrought thee much evil, grumbling that thou wrotest in
Greek and Latin (of which tongues certain of them had but little skill),
and blaming thy many lyric melodies and the free flow of thy lines.
What said M. de Balzac to M. Chapelain? 'M. de Malherbe, M. de
Grasse, and yourself must be very little poets, if Ronsard be a great
one.' Time has brought in his revenges, and Messieurs Chapelain and
De Grasse are as well forgotten as thou art wclI remembered. Men
could not ahvays be deaf to thy sweet old songs, nor blind to the beauty
of thy roses and thy loves. When they took the wax out of their ears that
M. Boileau had given them lest they should hear the singing of thy
Sirens, then they were deaf no longer, then they heard the old deaf poet
singing and made answer to his lays. Hast thou not heard these sounds?
have they not reached thee, the voices and the lyres of The'ophile
Gautier and Alfred de Musset? Methinks thou hast marked them, and
been glad that the old notes were ringing again and the old French
lyric measures tripping to thine ancient harmonies, echoing and
replying to the Muses of Horace and Catullus. Returning to Nature,
poets returned to thee. Thy monument has perished, but not thy music,
and the Prince of Poets has returned to his own again in a glorious
Restoration.
Through the dust and smoke of ages, and through the centuries of wars
we strain our eyes and try to gain a glimpse of thee, Master, in thy
good days, when the Muses walked with thee. We seem to mark thee
wandering silent through some little village, or dreaming in the woods,
or loitering among thy lonely places, or in gardens where the roses
blossom among wilder flowers, or on river banks where the whispering
poplars and sighing reeds make answer to the murmur of the waters.
Such a picture hast thou drawn of thyself in the summer afternoons.
Je m'en vais pourmener tantost parmy la plaine, Tantost en un village,
et tantost en un bois, Et tantost par les lieux solitaires et cois. J'aime
fort les jardins qui sentent le sauvage, J'aime le flot de l'eau qui
gazou'ille au rivage.

Still, methinks, there was a book in the hand of the grave and learned
poet; still thou wouldst carry thy Horace, thy Catullus, thy Theocritus,
through the gem-like weather of the Renouveau, when the woods were
enamelled with flowers, and the young Spring was lodged, like a
wandering prince, in his great palaces hung with green: Orgueilleux de
ses fleurs, enfle' de sa jeunesse,