_Là du plaisant Avril la saison immortelle_ _Sans eschange le suit_, _La terre sans labour, de sa grasse mamelle_, _Toute chose y produit_; _D’enbas la troupe sainte autrefois amoureuse_, _Nous honorant sur tous_, _Viendra nous saluer, s’estimant bien-heureuse_ _De s’accointer de nous_.
There thou dwellest, with the learned lovers of old days, with Belleau, and Du Bellay, and Baïf, and the flower of the maidens of Anjou. Surely no rumour reaches thee, in that happy place of reconciled affections, no rumour of the rudeness of Time, the despite of men, and the change which stole from thy locks, so early grey, the crown of laurels and of thine own roses. How different from thy choice of a sepulchre have been the fortunes of thy tomb!
I will that none should break The marble for my sake, Wishful to make more fair My sepulchre!
So didst thou sing, or so thy sweet numbers run in my rude English. Wearied of Courts and of priories, thou didst desire a grave beside thine own Loire, not remote from
The caves, the founts that fall From the high mountain wall, That fall and flash and fleet, With silver feet.
Only a laurel tree Shall guard the grave of me; Only Apollo’s bough Shall shade me now!
Far other has been thy sepulchre: not in the free air, among the field flowers, but in thy priory of Saint Cosme, with marble for a monument, and no green grass to cover thee. Restless wert thou in thy life; thy dust was not to be restful in thy death. The Huguenots, _ces nouveaux Chrétiens qui la France ont pillée_, destroyed thy tomb, and the warning of the later monument,
ABI, NEFASTE, QUAM CALCUS HUMUM SACRA EST,
has not scared away malicious men. The storm that passed over France a hundred years ago, more terrible than the religious wars that thou didst weep for, has swept the column from the tomb. The marble was broken by violent hands, and the shattered sepulchre of the Prince of Poets gained a dusty hospitality from the museum of a country town. Better had been the laurel of thy desire, the creeping vine, and the ivy tree.
Scarce more fortunate, for long, than thy monument was thy memory. Thou hast not encountered, Master, in the Paradise of Poets, Messieurs Malherbe, De Balzac, and Boileau—Boileau who spoke of thee as _Ce poète orgueilleux trébuché de si haut_!