Helen 2:(75a)

Vous ruisseaux, vous rochers, vous antres solitaires,

Vous chesnes, heritiers du silence des bois,

Entendez les souspirs de ma derniere vois,

Et de mon testament soyez presents notaires.

 

Soyez de mon mal-heur fideles secretaires,

Gravez-le en vostre escorce, à fin que tous les mois

Il croisse comme vous ; cependant je m’en vois

Là bas privé de sens, de veines, et d’artères.

 

Je meurs pour la rigueur d’une fiere beauté,

Qui vit sans foy, sans loy, amour ne loyauté,

Qui me succe le sang comme un tigre sauvage.

 

Adieu, forests, adieu ! Adieu le verd sejour

De vos arbres, heureux pour ne cognoistre Amour

Ny sa mère, qui tourne en fureur le plus sage.

 

 

 

 

                                                                            You rivers, you rocks, you solitary caves,

                                                                            You oaks, inheritors of the silence of the woods,

                                                                            Hear the sighs of my last words,

                                                                            And be present as notaries of my will and testament.

 

                                                                            Be the faithful secretaries of my misfortune,

                                                                            Write of it in your bark, that every month

                                                                            It may grow like you: I, however, am going away

                                                                            Down below, deprived of sense, of veins, of arteries.

 

                                                                            I am dying because of the harshness of a proud beauty

                                                                            Who lives without faith, without law, love or loyalty,

                                                                            Who sucks out my blood like a savage tiger.

 

                                                                            Farewell, forests, farewell! Farewell green rest

                                                                            In your trees, happy for not knowing Love

                                                                            Nor his mother, who turns to madness the most wise.

 

 

 

 

This is another of those poems added by Blanchemain which seem to have arrived late at the party, being present only in posthumous editions. Again, familiar tropes, but beautifully done.

 

The opening with its sensitive nature poetry gives way to to the inhabitants of Ronsard’s other world, the Court, with its notaries and secretaries recording everything. Then we are off ‘down below’ to the world of the dead – have you noticed how Ronsard’s (poetic) concept of the afterlife is not ‘up’ in the Christian heaven but ‘down’ in the shades of the classical Hades? – and then back to savage nature with the image of the tiger before returning full circle to the woods and trees we began with. 

 

It’s all beautifully unbalanced too – the thoughts occupying less than, or more than, one section of the poem at a time: very un-rational, but a neatly-balanced, artistically-rendered version of un-balance.

 

To state the obvious, the last line is of course speaking of Cupid and Venus. (I note in passing – since my son was doing his Latin vocabulary last night – that Cupid is not the god of love, but of desire: it’s a rather different thing.)