Bow to our Sun, to our Queen, and that fair one Come to behold our sports: Each bonny lass here is counted a rare one, As those in princes' courts. These and we With country glee, Will teach the woods to resound, And the hills with echoes hollow. Skipping lambs Their bleating dams 'Mongst kids shall trip it round; For joy thus our wenches we follow.
Wind, jolly huntsmen, your neat bugles shrilly, Hounds, make a lusty cry; Spring up, you falconers, partridges freely, Then let your brave hawks fly! Horses amain, Over ridge, over plain, The dogs have the stag in chase: 'Tis a sport to content a king. So ho! ho! through the skies How the proud birds flies, And sousing, kills with a grace! Now the deer falls; hark! how they ring.
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes, Smiles awake you when you rise. Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry, And I will sing a lullaby. Rock them, rock them, lullaby.
Care is heavy, therefore sleep you. You are care, and care must keep you. Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry, And I will sing a lullaby. Rock them, rock them, lullaby.
This French lyrical poet and dramatist, born in Havre in 1793, and brought up at Paris, was awarded a prize by the Académie Française in 1811, elected a member of that illustrious body July 7th, 1825, and died December 11th, 1843. When hardly twenty years of age he had already made his name famous by dithyrambs, the form of which, imitated from the ancients, enabled him to express in sufficiently poetic manner quite modern sentiments. Possessed of brilliant and easy imagination, moderately enthusiastic, and more sober than powerful, he hit upon a lucky vein which promptly led him to fame. He described the recent disasters of his country in fine odes entitled 'Messéniennes,' in allusion to the chants in which the defeated Messenians deplored the hardships inflicted on them by the Spartans. Those political elegies were named--'La Bataille de Waterloo' (The Battle of Waterloo); 'La Dévastation du Musée' (The Spoliation of the Museum); 'Sur le Besoin de S'unir après le Départ des Étrangers' (On the Necessity of Union after the Departure of the Foreigners). They expressed emotions agitating the mind of the country. At the same time they appealed to the heart of the "liberals" of the period by uttering their regrets for vanished power, their rancor against the victorious party, their fears for threatened liberty. The circumstances, the passions of the day, as also the awakening of young and new talent, all concurred to favor Casimir Delavigne, who almost from the very first attained high reputation. In 1819 the publication of two more Messéniennes, on the life and death of Joan of Arc,--inspired like the first with deep patriotic fervor,--was received with enthusiasm.