Helen 2:75

Je m’en-fuy du combat, ma bataille est desfaite :

J’ay perdu contre Amour la force et la raison :

Ja dix lustres passez, et ja mon poil grison

M’appellent au logis, et sonnent la retraite.

 

Si comme je voulois ta gloire n’est parfaite,

N’en blasme point l’esprit, mais blasme la saison :

Je ne suis ny Pâris, ny desloyal Jason :

J’obeis à la loy que la Nature a faite.

 

Entre l’aigre et le doux, l’esperance et la peur,

Amour dedans ma forge a poly cest ouvrage.

Je ne me plains du mal, du temps ny du labeur,

 

Je me plains de moymesme et de ton faux courage.

Tu t’en repentiras, si tu as un bon cœur,

Mais le tard repentir n’amande le dommage.

 

 

 

                                                                            I flee from the fight, my battle is lost:

                                                                            I have lost, fighting Love, both strength and reason;

                                                                            Fifty years now gone, and now my grey hairs,

                                                                            All call me to rest, and sound the retreat.

 

                                                                            If your glory is not perfected as I wished,

                                                                            Don’t blame my spirit for it, but blame the season:

                                                                            I am neither Paris, nor disloyal Jason;

                                                                            I obey the law which Nature has made.

 

                                                                            Between sour and sweet, hope and fear,

                                                                            Love within my forge has polished this work.

                                                                            I do not complain of trouble, time and labour,

 

                                                                            I complain of myself and of your false courage.

                                                                            You will repent it, if you have a good heart,

                                                                            But late repenting does not mend the loss.

 

 

 

 

And so, the last sonnet to Helen: a mixture of reproach of her, reproach of self, and (inevitably) a claim that in the end it is Helen’s loss… Ronsard is not Paris (failing the original Helen) nor Jason (abandoning Medea) – he has put in the time and trouble, it is Helen who is abandoning him. ‘You will repent it’: I wonder if she did?

 

Of course not! The literary character Hélène might have done so, losing a lover. But the real Hélène had no reason to complain: she has been the centre of attention in two books of France’s finest sonnets; even if portrayed as distant and ungrateful she has been portrayed also as chaste and inaccessible, beautiful and virtuous; and, far from late repenting at the loss of the affair, she has got everything she needed from it – the poems, the fame, the immortality. In fact.as we saw elsewhere, her only complaint was that too many of the poems were recycled from earlier collections!

 

Blanchemain offers a small change in line 1: “Je m’en-fuy du combat, mon armée est desfaite” (‘I flee from the fight, my army is lost’).