Helen 2:58

Seule sans compagnie en une grande salle

Tu logeois l’autre jour pleine de majesté,

Cœur vrayment genereux, dont la brave beauté

Sans pareille ne treuve une autre qui l’égalle.

 

Ainsi seul en son ciel le Soleil se devalle,

Sans autre compagnon en son char emporté :

Ainsi loin de ses Dieux en son Palais vouté

Jupiter a choisi sa demeure royale.

 

Une ame vertueuse a tousjours un bon cœur :

Le Liévre fuyt tousjours, la Biche a tousjours peur,

Le Lyon de soymesme asseuré se hazarde.

 

La peur qui sert au peuple et de frein et de Loy,

Ne sçauroit estonner ny ta vertu ny toy :

La Loy ne sert de rien, quand la vertu nous garde.

 

 

 

                                                                            Alone without company in a grand hall

                                                                            You waited the other day, full of majesty,

                                                                            A truly generous heart whose worthy beauty

                                                                            Without parallel can find no other to equal it.

 

                                                                            Thus alone in his heaven the Sun runs along

                                                                            Without other companion borne in his chariot;

                                                                            Thus, far from the gods in his vaulted palace,

                                                                            Jupiter has chosen his royal residence.

 

                                                                            A virtuous soul always has a good heart;

                                                                            The hare always runs away, the doe is always afraid,

                                                                            The lion, sure of himself, takes risks.

 

                                                                            The fear which acts for the people as a restraint and as law

                                                                            Could not take either your virtue or yourself by surprise;

                                                                            There’s no need for the Law, when virtue protects us.

 

 

 

A poem which is so consistently positive, so unbendingly in praise of his mistress’s virtues, is something of a rarity towards the end of the book. So let’s celebrate this occasion!

 

As so often, we begin with reality and then there is a mythological parallel; and then the sestet takes us in another (but parallel) direction. Helen, alone in glory in a grand hall (it could just be a large room, but let’s think grand hall instead), is like the Sun alone in the sky or Jupiter ruling alone in heaven. She sits ‘in majesty’, a ruler like them. She is like a lion, so full of virtue that virtue alone, unaided by law, protects her.

 

We might argue the toss about the lion’s virtue, in an age where power and strength need to be wedded with mercy and tolerance; but the sixteenth century was less subtle in these matters – especially in the midst of the Wars of Religion, effectively a French civil war. Which is where, too, the fear comes in – a fear which Helen’s virtue protects her from.

 

And it’s lovely poetry too: hear those long, slow, noble syllables pile up at the beginning; the assonance in the opening line repeated at the start of the second quatrain, and then on into the two halves of the sestet; the carefully-balanced lines, either in words (“tousjours .. tousjours”) or in weight.

 

Of course, Ronsard didn’t arrive here without effort: Blanchemain has an alternative version of the final tercet – same sense, different words:

 

 

Cela qu’au peuple fait la crainte de la loy,

La naïfve vertu sans peur le fait en toy.

La Loy ne sert de rien, quand la vertu nous garde.

 

 

                                                                            That which among the people creates fear of the law

                                                                            Naive virtue, fearless, creates in you.

                                                                            There’s no need for the Law, when virtue protects us.

 

 

It is, let’s say, a more difficult sense to unravel; but I think it has a weight about it that the simpler revision lacks.