"Et arrivoit pour bénistre la vigne."
Apart from his place in letters, see how national he is in what he does!
He buys two bits of land, he talks of them continually, sees to them,
visits them. They are quite little bits of land. He calls one Clément,
and the other Marot! Here is a whimsicality you would not find, I think,
among another people.
He has the hatred of "sprawling" in his particular art which is the
chief aesthetic character of the French; but he has the tendency to
excess in opinion or in general expression which is their chief
political fault.
It is thus, then, that I think he should be regarded and that I would
desire to present him. It is thus, I am sure, that he should be read if
one is to know why he has taken so great a place in the reverence and
the history of the French people.
And it is in this aspect that he may worthily introduce much greater
things, the Pléiade and Ronsard.
OF COURTING LONG AGO.
(_The Eighth of the Roundels._)
This is a fair enough specimen of Marot at his daily gait: an easy
versifier "on a theme" and no more. I have said that it is unjust to
judge him on that level, and I have said why; but I give this to give
the man as he moved domestically to the admiration of the court and of
his friends in a time which missed, for example, the epic character of
the last six lines of "Le Beau Tettin," and which hardly comprehended of
what value his pure lyric enthusiasms would be to a sadder and drier
posterity.
_OF COURTING LONG AGO._
_Au bon vieulx temps un train d'amour regnoit,
Qui sans grand art et dons se démenoit,
Si qu'un boucquet donné d'amour profonde
S'estoit donné toute la terre ronde:
Car seulement au cueur on se prenoit._
_Et si, par cas, à jouyr on venoit,
Sçavez-vous bien comme on s'entretenoit?
Vingt ans, trente ans; cela duroit ung monde
Au bon vieulx temps._
_Or est perdu ce qu'amour ordonnoit,
Rien que pleurs fainctz, rien que changes on n'oyt.
Qui vouldra donc qu'à aymer je me fonde,
Il fault, premier, que l'amour on refonde
Et qu'on la meine ainsi qu'on la menoit
Au bon vieulx temps._
NOËL.
(_The Second of the Chansons._)
But here, upon the contrary, is the spontaneity of his happy mind; it
suggests a song; one can hardly read it without a tune in one's head, so
simple is it and so purely lyrical: there is a touch of the dance in it,
too.
In these little things of Marot, which are neither learned (and he
boasted of learning) nor set and dry (and his friends especially praised
his precision), a great poet certainly appears--in short revelations,
but still appears. Unfortunately there are not enough of them.
That he thought "like a Southerner," as I have maintained and as I shall
show by a further example, is made the more probable from the value he
lends to the feminine e. The excellent rhythm of this poem you will only
get by giving the feminine e the value of a drawn out syllable:
"L'effect
Est faict:
La bel-le
Pucel-le," etc.
So Spaniards, Gascons, Provençaux, Italians, rhyme, and all those of the
south who have retained their glorious "a's" and "o's".
As for the spirit of it--God bless him!--it is a subject for perpetual
merriment to think of such a man's being taken for a true Huguenot and
enmeshed, even for a while, in the nasty cobweb of Geneva. But in the
last thing I shall quote, when he is Bacchic for the vine, you will see
it still more.
_NOËL._
_Une pastourelle gentille
Et ung bergier en ung verger
L'autrhyer en jouant à la bille
S'entredisoient, pour abréger:
Roger
Bergier
Legière
Bergière,
C'est trop à la bille joué;
Chantons Noé, Noé, Noé._
_Te souvient-il plus du prophète
Qui nous dit cas de si hault faict,
Que d'une pucelle parfaicte
Naistroit ung enfant tout parfaict?
L'effect
Est faict:
La belle
Pucelle
A eu ung filz du ciel voué:
Chantons Noé, Noé, Noé._
TWO EPIGRAMS.
(_The 41st of the First Book and the 46th of the Second._)
These two epigrams are again but examples of the readiness, the wit, the
hard surface of Marot, and they needed no more poetry than was in
Voltaire or Swift, but they needed style. It was this absolute and
standard style which his contemporaries chiefly remarked in him: the
marvel was, that being mainly such an epigrammatist and scholar, and
praised and supported only in that guise, he should have carried in him
any, or rather so much, fire.
The first was his reply to a Dixaine the king's sister had sent him. The
second explains itself.
_TWO EPIGRAMS._
_Mes créanciers, qui de dixains n'ont cure,
Ont leu le vostre; et sur ce leur ay dict:
"Sire Michel, sire Bonaventure,
La soeur du Roy a pour moy faict ce dit."
Lors eulx cuydans que fusse en grand crédict,
M'ont appelé monsieur à cry et cor,
Et m'a valu vostre escript aultant qu'or;
Car promis m'ont non seulement d'attendre,
Mais d'en prester, foy de marchant, encor,
Et j'ay promis, foy de Clément, d'en prendre._
_Paris, tu m'as faict maints alarmes,
Jusque à me poursuivre à la mort:
Je n'ay que blasonné tes armes:
Un ver, quand on le presse, il mord!
Encor la coulpe m'en remord.
Ne scay de toy comment sera;
Mais de nous deux le diable emport
Celuy qui recommencera._
TO HIS LADY IN SICKNESS.
(_The 16th Epistle._)
It is the way this is printed that makes some miss its value. It is,
like all the best he wrote, a song; it needs the varying time of human
expression, the effect of tone, the repose and the re-lifting of musical
notes; illuminated thus it greatly charmed, and if any one would know
the order of such a tune, why, it should follow the punctuation: a
cessation at the third line; a rise of rapid accents to the thirteenth,
and then a change; the last three lines of the whole very much fuller
and strong.
So I would hear it sung on a winter evening in an old house in Auvergne,
and re-enter the sixteenth century as I heard.
_TO HIS LADY IN SICKNESS._
_Ma mignonne,
Je vous donne
Le bon jour.
Le séjour,
C'est prison.
Guérison
Recouvrez,
Puis ouvrez
Vostre porte
Et qu'on sorte
Vistement;
Car Clément
Le vous mande.
Va, friande
De ta bouche,
Qui se couche
En danger
Pour manger
Confitures;
Si tu dures
Trop malade,
Couleur fade
Tu prendras
Et perdras
L'embonpoint.
Dieu te doint,
Santé bonne,
Ma mignonne._
THE VINEYARD SONG.
(_The 4th of the Chansons._)
Here is Marot's best--even though many of his native critics will not
admit it so; but to feel it in full one must be exiled from the vines.
It is a tapestry of the Renaissance; the jolly gods of the Renaissance,
the old gods grown Catholic moving across a happier stage. Bacchus in
long robes and with solemnity blessing the vine, Silenus and the
hobbling smith who smithied the Serpe, the Holy Vineyard Knife in
heaven, all these by their diction and their flavour recall the Autumn
in Herault and the grapes under a pure sky, pale at the horizon, and
labourers and their carts in the vineyard, and these set in the frame of
that great time when Saturn did return.
All the poem is wine. It catches its rhymes and weaves them in and in,
and moves rapid and careless in a fugue, like the march from Asia when
the Panthers went before and drew the car. The internal rhythm and pulse
is the clapping of hands in barns at evening and the peasants' feet
dancing freely on the beaten earth. It is a very good song; it remembers
the treading of the grapes and is refreshed by the mists that rise at
evening when the labour is done.
_THE VINEYARD SONG._
_Changeons propos, c'est trop chanté d'amours,
Ce sont clamours, chantons de la Serpette,
Tous vignerons ont à elle recours,
C'est leur secours pour tailler la vignette.
O serpilette, ô la serpilonnette,
La vignolette est par toy mise sus,
Dont les bons vins, tous les ans, sont yssus!_
_Le dieu Vulcain, forgeron des haults dieux,
Forgea aux cieulx la serpe bien taillante,
De fin acier, trempé en bon vin vieulx,
Pour tailler mieulx et estre plus vaillante.
Bacchus le vante et dit qu'elle est séante
Et convenante à Noé le bonshom
Pour en tailler la vigne en la saison._
_Bacchus alors chappeau de treille avoit,
Et arrivoit pour bénistre la vigne;
Avec flascons Silénus le suivoit,
Lequel beuvoit aussi droict qu'une ligne;
Puis il trépigne, et se faict une bigne;
Comme une guigne estoit rouge son nez.
Beaucoup de gens de sa race sont nez._