"So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth possessed,
there in Lacedæmon, in the dear fatherland."[64]
Note, here, the high poetical truth carried to the extreme. The poet
has to speak of the earth in sadness, but he will not let that sadness
affect or change his thoughts of it. No; though Castor and Pollux be
dead, yet the earth is our mother still, fruitful, life-giving. These
are the facts of the thing. I see nothing else than these. Make what
you will of them.
Take another very notable instance from Casimir de la Vigne's terrible
ballad, "La Toilette de Constance." I must quote a few lines out of it
here and there, to enable the reader who has not the book by him, to
understand its close.
"Vite, Anna! vite; au miroir!
Plus vite, Anna. L'heure s'avance,
Et je vais au bal ce soir
Chez l'ambassadeur de France.
"Y pensez-vous? ils sont fanés, ces noeuds;
Ils sont d'hier; mon Dieu, comme tout passe!
Que du réseau qui retient mes cheveux
Les glands d'azur retombent avec grâce.
Plus haut! Plus bas! Vous ne comprenez rien!
Que sur mon front ce saphir étincelle:
Vous me piquez, maladroite. Ah, c'est bien,
Bien,--chère Anna! Je t'aime, je suis belle."
"Celui qu'en vain je voudrais oublier ...
(Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'espère.
(Ah, fi! profane, est-ce là mon collier?
Quoi! ces grains d'or bénits par le Saint-Père!)
II y sera; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main,
En y pensant à peine je respire:
Frère Anselmo doit m'entendre demain,
Comment ferai-je, Anna, pour tout lui dire?...
"Vite! un coup d'oeil au miroir,
Le dernier.--J'ai l'assurance
Qu'on va m'adorer ce soir
Chez l'ambassadeur de France."
Pres du foyer, Constance s'admirait.
Dieu! sur sa robe il vole une étincelle!
Au feu! Courez! Quand l'espoir l'enivrait,
Tout perdre ainsi! Quoi! Mourir,--et si belle!
L'horrible feu ronge avec volupté
Ses bras, son sein, et l'entoure, et s'élève,
Et sans pitié dévore sa beauté,
Ses dix-huit ans, hélas, et son doux rêve!
Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour!
On disait, Pauvre Constance!
Et l'on dansa, jusqu'au jour,
Chez l'ambassadeur de France.[65]
Yes, that is the fact of it. Right or wrong, the poet does not say.
What you may think about it, he does not know. He has nothing to do
with that. There lie the ashes of the dead girl in her chamber. There
they danced, till the morning, at the Ambassador's of France. Make
what you will of it.
If the reader will look through the ballad, of which I have quoted
only about the third part, he will find that there is not, from
beginning to end of it, a single poetical (so called) expression,
except in one stanza. The girl speaks as simple prose as may be; there
is not a word she would not have actually used as she was dressing.
The poet stands by, impassive as a statue, recording her words just as
they come. At last the doom seizes her, and in the very presence of
death, for an instant, his own emotions conquer him. He records no
longer the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him. The fire
gnaws with _voluptuousness_--_without pity_. It is soon past. The fate
is fixed for ever; and he retires into his pale and crystalline
atmosphere of truth. He closes all with the calm veracity,