“Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.All, singing birds, your happy music pour;Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile;Flit to these ancient gods we still adore:‘It may be we shall touch the happy isle.’”
Alas! the mists that veil the shore of our Cythera are not the summer haze of Watteau, but the smoke and steam of a commercial time.
It is as a lyric poet that we have studied M. De Banville. “Je ne m’entends qu’a la meurique,” he says in his ballad on himself; but he can write prose when he pleases.
It is in his drama of Gringoire acted at the Theatre Francais, and familiar in the version of Messrs. Pollock and Besant, that M. De Banville’s prose shows to the best advantage. Louis XI. is supping with his bourgeois friends and with the terrible Olivier le Daim. Two beautiful girls are of the company, friends of Pierre Gringoire, the strolling poet. Presently Gringoire himself appears. He is dying of hunger; he does not recognise the king, and he is promised a good supper if he will recite the new satirical “Ballade des Pendus,” which he has made at the monarch’s expense. Hunger overcomes his timidity, and, addressing himself especially to the king, he enters on this goodly matter:
“Where wide the forest boughs are spread,Where Flora wakes with sylph and fay,Are crowns and garlands of men dead,All golden in the morning gay;Within this ancient garden greyAre clusters such as no mail knows,Where Moor and Soldan bear the sway:This is King Louis’ orchard close!
“These wretched folk wave overhead,With such strange thoughts as none may say;A moment still, then sudden sped,They swing in a ring and waste away.The morning smites them with her ray;They toss with every breeze that blows,They dance where fires of dawning play:This is King Louis’ orchard close!
“All hanged and dead, they’ve summoned(With Hell to aid, that hears them pray)New legions of an army dread,Now down the blue sky flames the day;The dew dies off; the foul arrayOf obscene ravens gathers and goes,With wings that flap and beaks that flay:This is King Louis’ orchard close!
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