FROM THE NOEI BOURGUIGNON DE GUI BAROZAI
I hear along our street Pass the minstrel throngs;Hark! they play so sweet, On their hautboys, Christmas songs!
Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire!
In December ring Every day the chimes;
Loud the gleemen sing In the streets their merry rhymes.
Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire.
Shepherds at the grange, Where the Babe was born, Sang, with many a change, Christmas carols until morn.
Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire!
These good people sang Songs devout and sweet;While the rafters rang, There they stood with freezing feet.
Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire.
Nuns in frigid veils At this holy tide, For want of something else, Christmas songs at times have tried.
Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them fill the night expire!
Washerwomen old, To the sound they beat, Sing by rivers cold, With uncovered heads and feet.
Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire.
Who by the fireside stands Stamps his feet and sings;But he who blows his hands Not so gay a carol brings.
Let us by the fire Ever higher Sing them till the night expire!
CONSOLATION
To M.Duperrier, Gentleman of Aix in Provence, on the Death of his Daughter.
BY FRANCOISE MALHERBE
Will then, Duperrier, thy sorrow be eternal?
And shall the sad discourse Whispered within thy heart, by tenderness paternal, Only augment its force?
Thy daughter's mournful fate, into the tomb descending By death's frequented ways, Has it become to thee a labyrinth never ending, Where thy lost reason strays?
I know the charms that made her youth a benediction:
Nor should I be content, As a censorious friend, to solace thine affliction By her disparagement.
But she was of the world, which fairest things exposes To fates the most forlorn;A rose, she too hath lived as long as live the roses, The space of one brief morn.
*****
Death has his rigorous laws, unparalleled, unfeeling;All prayers to him are vain;
Cruel, he stops his ears, and, deaf to our appealing, He leaves us to complain.
The poor man in his hut, with only thatch for cover, Unto these laws must bend;The sentinel that guards the barriers of the Louvre Cannot our kings defend.
To murmur against death, in petulant defiance, Is never for the best;To will what God doth will, that is the only science That gives us any rest.
TO CARDINAL RICHELIEU
BY FRANCOIS DE MALHERBE
Thou mighty Prince of Church and State, Richelieu! until the hour of death, Whatever road man chooses, Fate Still holds him subject to her breath.
Spun of all silks, our days and nights Have sorrows woven with delights;And of this intermingled shade Our various destiny appears, Even as one sees the course of years Of summers and of winters made.
Sometimes the soft, deceitful hours Let us enjoy the halcyon wave;Sometimes impending peril lowers Beyond the seaman's skill to save, The Wisdom, infinitely wise, That gives to human destinies Their foreordained necessity, Has made no law more fixed below, Than the alternate ebb and flow Of Fortune and Adversity.
THE ANGEL AND THE CHILD
BY JEAN REBOUL, THE BAKER OF NISMES
An angel with a radiant face, Above a cradle bent to look, Seemed his own image there to trace, As in the waters of a brook.
"Dear child! who me resemblest so,"
It whispered, "come, O come with me!
Happy together let us go, The earth unworthy is of thee!
"Here none to perfect bliss attain;
The soul in pleasure suffering lies;
Joy hath an undertone of pain, And even the happiest hours their sighs.
"Fear doth at every portal knock;
Never a day serene and pure From the o'ershadowing tempest's shock Hath made the morrow's dawn secure.
"What then, shall sorrows and shall fears Come to disturb so pure a brow?
And with the bitterness of tears These eyes of azure troubled grow?
"Ah no! into the fields of space, Away shalt thou escape with me;And Providence will grant thee grace Of all the days that were to be.
"Let no one in thy dwelling cower, In sombre vestments draped and veiled;But let them welcome thy last hour, As thy first moments once they hailed.
"Without a cloud be there each brow;
There let the grave no shadow cast;
When one is pure as thou art now, The fairest day is still the last."And waving wide his wings of white, The angel, at these words, had sped Towards the eternal realms of light!--Poor mother! see, thy son is dead!
ON THE TERRACE OF THE AIGALADES
BY JOSEPH MERY
From this high portal, where upsprings The rose to touch our hands in play, We at a glance behold three things--The Sea, the Town, and the Highway.
And the Sea says: My shipwrecks fear;
I drown my best friends in the deep;
And those who braved icy tempests, here Among my sea-weeds lie asleep!
The Town says: I am filled and fraught With tumult and with smoke and care;My days with toil are overwrought, And in my nights I gasp for air.
The Highway says: My wheel-tracks guide To the pale climates of the North;Where my last milestone stands abide The people to their death gone forth.
Here, in the shade, this life of ours, Full of delicious air, glides by Amid a multitude of flowers As countless as the stars on high;These red-tiled roofs, this fruitful soil, Bathed with an azure all divine, Where springs the tree that gives us oil, The grape that giveth us the wine;Beneath these mountains stripped of trees, Whose tops with flowers are covered o'er, Where springtime of the Hesperides Begins, but endeth nevermore;Under these leafy vaults and walls, That unto gentle sleep persuade;This rainbow of the waterfalls, Of mingled mist and sunshine made;Upon these shores, where all invites, We live our languid life apart;This air is that of life's delights, The festival of sense and heart;This limpid space of time prolong, Forget to-morrow in to-day, And leave unto the passing throng The Sea, the Town, and the Highway.
TO MY BROOKLET
BY JEAN FRANCOIS DUCIS
Thou brooklet, all unknown to song, Hid in the covert of the wood!
