FROM THE FRENCH OF XAVIER MARMIER.
AT La Chaudeau, - 't is long since then:
I was young, —
my years twice ten;
All things smiled on the happy boy,
Dreams of love and songs of joy,
Azure of heaven and wave below,
At La Chaudeau.
To La Chaudeau I come back old:
My head is gray, my blood is cold;
Seeking along the meadow ooze,
Seeking beside the river Seymouse,
The days of my spring-time of long ago
At La Chaudeau.
At La Chaudeau nor heart nor brain
Ever grows old with grief and pain;
A sweet remembrance keeps off age:
A tender friendship doth still assuage
The burden of sorrow that one may know
At La Chaudeau.
At La Chaudeau, had fate decreed
To limit the wandering life I lead,
Peradventure I still, forsooth,
Should have preserved my fresh green youth,
Under the shadows the hill-tops throw
At La Chaudeau.
At La Chaudeau, live on, my friends,
Happy to be where God intends;
And sometimes, by the evening fire,
Think of him whose sole desire
Is again to sit in the old château
At La Chaudeau.
LET him who will, by force or fraud innate,
Of courtly grandeurs gain the slippery height,
I, leaving not the home of my delight,
Far from the world and noise will meditate.
Then, without pomps or perils of the great,
I shall behold the day succeed the night;
Behold the alternate seasons take their flight,
And in serene repose old age await.
And so, whenever Death shall come to close
The happy moments that my days compose,
I, full of years, shall die, obscure, alone!
How wretched is the man, with honors crowned,
Who, having not the one thing needful found,
Dies, known to all, but to himself unknown.
September 11, 1879.
VICTOR AND VANQUISHED.
As one who long hath fled with panting breath
Before his foe, bleeding and near to fall,
I turn and set my back against the wall,
And look thee in the face, triumphant Death,
I call for aid, and no one answereth;
I am alone with thee, who conquerest all; Yet me thy threatening form doth not appall, For thou art but a phantom and a wraith. Wounded and weak, sword broken at the hilt, With armor shattered, and without a shield, I stand unmoved; do with me what thou wilt; I can resist no more, but will not yield. This is no tournament where cowards tilt; The vanquished here is victor of the field." April 4, 1876.
OFT I remember those whom I have known
In other days, to whom my heart was led
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
As graves with grasses are, and at their head
The stone with moss and lichens so o'erspread,
Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them? After long years,
Do they remember me in the same way,
And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
And yet the root perennial may be.
DANTE, Par. xiii. st. 77.
Needs not your presence. No one waits for you.
Stay one day longer with me. They who go
Feel not the pain of parting; it is they
Who stay behind that suffer. I was thinking
But yesterday how like and how unlike
The good Vespasian, an old man, who seemed
Have been, and are, our destinies. Your husband,
Died in your arms; but mine, in all the flower
A father to you rather than a husband,
And promise of his youth, was taken from me
As by a rushing wind. The breath of battle
Breathed on him, and I saw his face no more,
As our love
Save as in dreams it haunts me.
Was for these men, so is our sorrow for them. Yours a child's sorrow, smiling through its tears; But mine the grief of an impassioned woman, Who drank her life up in one draught of love.
The Castle Terrace. VITTORIA COLONNA and Behold this locket. JULIA GONZAGA.
Of my Vespasian. This amaranth, and
This is the white hair This is the flower-of-love, beneath it the device
Non moritura. Thus my heart remains
True to his memory; and the ancient castle,
Where we have lived together, where he died,
Is dear to me as Ischia is to you.
For one who is too young, and feels too keenly
The joy of life, to give up all her days
To sorrow for the dead. While I am true
To the remembrance of the man I loved
And mourn for still, I do not make a show
Of all the grief I feel, nor live secluded
And, like Veronica da Gámbara,
Are there no brighter dreams,
No higher aspirations, than the wish
To please and to be pleased?
Drape my whole house in mourning, and drive I am no saint; I feel the world we live in
In coach of sable drawn by sable horses,
As if I were a corpse. Ali, one to-day
Is worth for me a thousand yesterdays.
Dear Julia! Friendship has its jealousies
As well as love. Who waits for you at Fondi ?
A friend of mine and yours; a friend and friar.
You have at Naples your Fra Bernadino;
And I at Fondi have my Fra Bastiano,
The famous artist, who has come from Rome
To paint my portrait. That is not a sin.
Comes before that which is to be hereafter,
And must be dealt with first.
Let the soft wind that wafts to us the odor
Of orange blossoms, let the laughing sea
And the bright sunshine bathing all the world,
Answer the question.
And for whom is meant This portrait that you speak of?
And there Vesuvius with its plume of smoke,
And the great city stretched upon the shore
As in a dream!
And yon long line of lights, those sunlit windows
Blaze like the torches carried in procession
To do her honor! It is beautiful!
I have no heart to feel the beauty of it!
My feet are weary, pacing up and down
These level flags, and wearier still my thoughts
Treading the broken pavement of the Past.
It is too sad. I will go in and rest,
And make me ready for to-morrow's journey.
I will go with you: for I would not lose
One hour of your dear presence. 'Tis enough
Only to be in the same room with you.
I need not speak to you, nor hear you speak;
If I but see you, I am satisfied.
Where she will be hereafter? O sweet dreams,
That through the vacant chambers of my heart
Walk in the silence, as familiar phantoms
Frequent an ancient house, what will ye with me?
'Tis said that Emperors write their names in green
When under age, but when of age in purple.
So Love, the greatest Emperor of them all,
Writes his in green at first, but afterwards
In the imperial purple of our blood.
First love or last love, which of these two pas
Is more omnipotent? Which is more fair,
The star of morning or the evening star?
The sunrise or the sunset of the heart?
The hour when we look forth to the unknown,
And the advancing day consumes the shadows,
Or that when all the landscape of our lives
Lies stretched behind us, and familiar places
Gleam in the distance, and sweet memories
Rise like a tender haze, and magnify
The objects we behold, that soon must vanish?
What matters it to me, whose countenance
Is like the Laocoon's, full of pain; whose forehead
Is a ploughed harvest-field, where threescore years
Have sown in sorrow and have reaped in anguish;
[They go in. To me, the artisan, to whom all women
Have been as if they were not, or at most
A sudden rush of pigeons in the air,
A flutter of wings, a sound, and then a silence?
I am too old for love; I am too old
MICHAEL ANGELO's Studio. He is at work on the To flatter and delude myself with visions
cartoon of the Last Judgment.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Why did the Pope and his ten Cardinals
Come here to lay this heavy task upon me?
Were not the paintings on the Sistine ceiling
Enough for thein? They saw the Hebrew leader
Waiting, and clutching his tempestuous beard,
But heeded not. The bones of Julius
Shook in their sepulchre. I heard the sound;
They only heard the sound of their own voices.
Are there no other artists here in Rome
To do this work, that they must needs seek me?
Fra Bastian, my Fra Bastian, might have done it;
But he is lost to art. The Papal Seals,
Like leaden weights upon a dead man's eyes,
Press down his lids; and so the burden falls
On Michael Angelo, Chief Architect
And Painter of the Apostolic Palace.
That is the title they cajole me with,
To make me do their work and leave my own;
But having once begun, I turn not back.
Blow, ye bright angels, on your golden trumpets
To the four corners of the earth, and wake
The dead to judgment! Ye recording angels,
Open your books and read! Ye dead, awake!
Rise from your graves, drowsy and drugged with
As men who suddenly aroused from sleep
Look round amazed, and know not where they are!
In happy hours, when the imagination
Wakes like a wind at midnight, and the soul
Trembles in all its leaves, it is a joy
To be uplifted on its wings, and listen
To the prophetic voices in the air
That call us onward. Then the work we do
Is a delight, and the obedient hand
Never grows weary. But how different is it
In the disconsolate, discouraged hours,
When all the wisdom of the world appears
As trivial as the gossip of a nurse
In a sick-room, and all our work seems useless.
What is it guides my hand, what thoughts possess me,
That I have drawn her face among the angels,
Of never-ending friendship with fair women,
Imaginations, fantasies, illusions,
In which the things that cannot be take shape,
And seem to be, and for the moment are.
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