A vous trouppe legere
Qui d'aile passagere
Par le monde volez,
Et d'un sifflant murmure
L'ombrageuse verdure
Doulcement esbranlez.
J'offre ces violettes,
Ces lis & ces fleurettes,
Et ces roses icy,
Ces vermeillettes roses
Sont freschement ecloses,
Et ces oelliets aussi.
De vostre doulce haleine,
Eventez ceste plaine
Eventez ce sejour;
Ce pendant que j'ahanne
A mon ble que je vanne
A la chaleur du jour.
*A graceful translation of this and some other poems of the Pleiad may be
found in Ballads and Lyrics of old France, by Mr. Andrew Lang.
That has, in the highest degree, the qualities, the value, of the whole
Pleiad school of poetry, of the whole phase of taste from which that
school derives--a certain silvery grace of fancy, nearly all the
pleasures of which is in the surprise at the happy and dexterous way in
which a thing slight in itself is handled. The sweetness of it is by no
means to be got at by crushing, as you crush wild herbs to get at their
perfume. One seems to hear the measured falling of the fans, with a
child's pleasure on coming across the incident for the first time, in one
of those great barns of Du Bellay's own country, La Beauce, the granary
of France. A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing, a weather-vane, a
windmill, a winnowing flail, the dust in the barn door: a moment--and the
thing has vanished, because it was pure effect; but it leaves a relish
behind it, a longing that the accident may happen again.
1872.