ELEGY ON HERSELF

Translated from Louise Labé.

The captive deer pants not for freedom more, Nor storm-beat vessel, striving for the shore, Than I thy blest return from day to day, Counting each moment of thy long delay ; Alas, I fondly fixed my term of pain, The day, the hour, when we should meet again : But, oh! this long, this dismal hope deferred, Has shown my trusting heart how much it erred ! Dear one unkind ! whom I too much adore, What meant thy promise, dwelt on o'er and o'er? Could all thy tenderness so quickly fade? So soon is my devotion thus repaid ?

Should'st thou so soon to her be faithless grown Whose thoughts, whose w ords, whose soul are all thine ow n ? Amidst the heights of rocky lands thy way

Perchance has been by fortune led astray, Some fairy form thy wandering path has crossed, And I thy wavering, careless heart have lost; And in that beautiful and distant spot, My hopes, my love, my sorrow are forgot!

If it be so, if I no more am prized.

Cast from thy mem'ry like a toy despised,

I marvel not with love that pity fled,

And all that told oi me and truth is dead.

Oh' how I loved thee! - how my thoughts and fears

Have dwelt on thee, and made my moments years!

Yet, let me pause, - have I not loved too well,

Far more than e"en this breaking heart can tell?

Have we not loved so fondly, that to change

Was quite impossible, most wild, most strange!

No : all my fond reliance I renew,

And will believe thee more than mortals true :

Thou'rt sick! — Thou'rt suffering!

— Heaven! and I away!

Thou'rt in some hostile clime condemned to stay! Ah ! no! ah! no I Heaven knows too well my care, And how I weary every saint with prayer; And it were hard if constancy like mine Gained not protection from the hosts divine. It cannot be - thy mind too lightly moved, Forgets in change and absence how we loved; While I, in whose sad heart no change can be, Contented suffer, and implore for thee!

Oh! when I ask kind Heaven to make thee blest, No crime, methinks, is lurking in my breast, Save, when my soul should all be given to prayer, I fondly pause and find thine image there!

Twice has the moon her new-born light received

Since thy return was promised and believed;

Yet silence and oblivion shroud thee still,

Nor know I of thy fortune, good or ill.

Though for another I am dead to thee,

She scarce, methinks, can boast of fame like me.

If in my form those charms and graces shme,

Which, some have said, the world esteems as mme.

Alasl with idle praise they crowned my name;

Who can depend upon the breath of fame?

Yet not in France alone the trump is blown.

E'en to the Pyrenees and Calpe flown,

Where the loud «ea washes that frowning shore,

Its echo wakes above the billows roar;

Where the broad Rhine's majestic waters flow

In the fair land where thou art roaming now ;

And thou hast told to my too willing ear

That noblest mortals held my glory dear.

Take thou the prize which all have sought to gain. Stay thou where others plead to stay in vain; And, oh! believe none may with me compare, I say not she, my rival, is less fair, But that so firm her passion cannot prove. Nor thou derive such honour from her love I For me are feasts and tourneys without end,

LARMES ET SOUHIRRS

The noble rich and brave for me contend;

Yet I, regardless, turn my careless eye,

And scarce for them have words of courtesy.

In thee my good and ill alike reside.

In thee is all, — without thee all is void ?

Not having thee alone when thou art lied,

All pleasure, all delight, all hope is dead'

And still to dream of happiness gone by,

And weep its loss, is now my sad employ !

Gloomy despair so triumphs o'er my mind,

Death seems the sole relief my woes can find,

And thou the cause! — thy absence mourned in vain

Thus keeps me lingering in unpitied pain :

Not living — for this is not life, condemned

To the sharp torment of a love contemned !

Return ! return ! if still one wish remain

To see this fading form yet once again ;

But if stern Death, before thee, come to claim

This broken heart and this exhausted frame,

At least in robes of sorrow's hue appear,

And follow to the grave my mournful bier;

There on the marble, pallid as my cheek,

These graven words my epitaph shall speak :

— « By thee, love's early flame was taught to glow,

And love consumed her heart who sleeps below,

The secret fire her silent ashes keep,

Till by thy tears the flame is charmed to sleep! »

d'une*'Do'ési7 mrH'nTt"^^ '!' critiqueurs, j'ai plusieurs fois supprimé mon nom quand j'étais l'auteur