The Poetical Works of Andrew Lang :: :: University of Virginia Library

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 gray,
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.

II François Villon

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.

III Pierre Ronsard

Master, I see thee with the locks of gray,
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.

And thou hast heard the pulse of Pindar beat,
Known Horace by the fount Bandusian!
Their deathless line thy living strains repeat,
But ah! thy voice is sad, thy roses wan,
But ah! thy honey is not cloying sweet,
Thy bees have fed on yews Sardinian.

IV Gérard 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,
Within whose gates, on weary wings and maimed,
Thou still wouldst bear that mystic golden bough
The Sibyl doth to singing men allow,
Yet thy report folk heeded not, but 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
A new life gladder than the old times were,
A love more fair than Sylvie and as kind?

V The Death of Mirandola

[_]

‘The Queen of Heaven appeared, comforting him and promising that he should not utterly die.’—Thomas More,, Life of Pico, 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 gray
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.