This delicate air of summer, this reminiscence and comfort for men who
no longer see the Eure or the Bievre or any of their northern rivers,
this very mirror of Du Bellay's own exiled mind--was written for an
"exercise." It is a translation--a translation from the Latin of a
forgotten Venetian scholar.
When a man finds in reading such a startling truth, it convinces him
that letters have a power of their own and are greater of themselves
than the things which inspired them: for when, to show his skill in
rendering Latin into French verse, Du Bellay had written this down, he
created and fixed for everybody who was to read him from then onwards
the permanent picture of a field by the side of a small, full river,
with a band of trees far off, and, above, the poplar leaves that are
never still. It runs to a kind of happy croon, and has for a few moments
restored very many who have read it to their own place; and Corot should
have painted it.
_THE WINNOWER'S HYMN TO THE WINDS._
_A vous troppe legere
Qui d'aele passagere
Par le monde volez,
Et d'un sifflant murmure
L'ombrageuse verdure
Doulcement esbranlez,
J'offre ces violettes,
Ces lis et ces fleurettes
Et ces roses ici,
Ces vermeillettes roses
Tout freschement escloses,
Et ces oeilletz aussi.
De vostre doulce haleine
Eventez ceste plaine
Eventez ce séjour,
Ce pendant que j'ahanne
A mon blé que je vanne
A la chaleur du jour._