A CHAUCER

par Eustache Deschamps, A toi pour ce de la fontaine Helic Régnier avoir un buvraige autentique.

Dont la doys est du tout en ta baillie, Pour rafrener d'elle ma'^soif éthique.

Qui en Gaule seray paralitique Jusques a ce que tu m'abuveras.

Eustaces sui, qui de mon plant aras :

Mais pran en gré les euvres d'escolier Que par Clifford de moy avoir pourras, Grant translateur, noble Geefry Chaucier.

L 'envoy

Poète hault, loenge destruye, En ton jardin ne seroye qu'ortie : Considère ce que j'ay dit premier, Ton noble plant, ta douce mélodie.

Mais pour sçavoir, de rescripre te prie, Grant translateur, noble Geffroy Chancier.

VERS DE LAMARTmE

Traduits en vers anglais.

My Soul is Sad Even unto Death.

As sad as death! ah ! does death suffer from griefs blight? Does nothingness complain to the eternal Night? Ah ! sadder far than this blest nothingness, I sigh Which has not e'er to die and whilst alive can't die. My soul's a death which feels and suffers, far from bliss, A pang immortal, gulf immense, e'en an abyss, Where thought in vain seeks oft itself to bury deep, But plunging in cannot destroy itself nor sleep, A dream with no awakening, night with no dawn gay, A fire which with no fuel burns and wastes each day. Ashes which fall when nought is lit, — a bitter cup — But where all that is thrown in is at once burnt up, A frenzy with no end, yes, an eternal pang, My soul behind itself with awe looks from griefs fang, And sees its few days passed already, cold and sped, Like some leaf which lies round a tree's trunk that's dead, I look before me, ah ! 'tis only doubt I view, Dark shadows hide the end of each way I pursue,- My being at each breath part of itself exhales, 'Twas I who suffered — these no longer are my wails, Each word's of my life's a shred, ah! harsh fate I charge, Man disappears and dies, and when I now^ enlarge On th' instability of this sad fleeting life, At all its tortures and its nothingness and strife. On thinking of life's problems which cause doubt alone, I feel that these are all, alas, to me unknown, I'm like an insect formed of one sun's single ray, AYhich sees one dawn and then returns to night from day, And feeling in myself the hopeless barren power Of searching what is infinite by thought each hour I seek a look of God on Nature and on me. And of each thing I ask-why-where is this lost key ? There, as sole ray of light, and sole response and link, I feel that in my second nothingness I sink. That I in vain regrets now vanish from this shore. That when I've asked a fresh boon I shall be no more. Then I am tempted to consider this drear life As but a sarcasm of a Blind Power, a sad strife, To speak its language harsh, and like the dying man Who cheats the death-pang and e'en laughs at his last span. My reason I'd destroy in a last frenzy fierce. And in a fit of laughter I'd Death's secret pierce.