It’s nice after all the love sonnets to get an extended nature-lyric to enjoy!
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Six ans estoient coulez, et la septiesme annee
Estoit presques entiere en ses pas retournee,
Quand loin d’affection, de desir et d’amour,
En pure liberté je passois tout le jour,
Et franc de tout soucy qui les ames devore,
Je dormois dés le soir jusqu’au point de l’aurore.
Car seul maistre de moy j’allois plein de loisir,
Où le pied me portoit, conduit de mon desir,
Ayant tousjours és mains pour me servir de guide
Aristote ou Platon, ou le docte Euripide,
Mes bons hostes muets, qui ne faschent jamais :
Ainsi que je les prens, ainsi je les remais.
O douce compagnie et utile et honneste!
Un autre en caquetant m’estourdiroit la teste.
Puis du livre ennuyé, je regardois les fleurs,
Fueilles tiges rameaux especes et couleurs,
Et l’entrecoupement de leurs formes diverses,
Peintes de cent façons, jaunes rouges et perses,
Ne me pouvant saouler, ainsi qu’en un tableau,
D’admirer la Nature, et ce qu’elle a de beau :
Et de dire en parlant aux fleurettes escloses,
“Celuy est presque Dieu qui cognoist toutes choses,
Esloigné du vulgaire, et loin des courtizans,
De fraude et de malice impudens artizans.”
Tantost j’errois seulet par les forests sauvages
Sur les bords enjonchez des peinturez rivages,
Tantost par les rochers reculez et deserts,
Tantost par les taillis, verte maison des cerfs.
’aimois le cours suivy d’une longue riviere,
Et voir onde sur onde allonger sa carriere,
Et flot à l’autre flot en roulant s’attacher,
Et pendu sur le bord me plaisoit d’y pescher,
Estant plus resjouy d’une chasse muette
Troubler des escaillez la demeure secrette,
Tirer avecq’ la ligne en tremblant emporté
Le credule poisson prins à l’haim apasté,
Qu’un grand Prince n’est aise ayant prins à la chasse
Un cerf qu’en haletant tout un jour il pourchasse.
Heureux, si vous eussiez d’un mutuel esmoy
Prins l’apast amoureux aussi bien comme moy,
Que tout seul j’avallay, quand par trop desireuse
Mon ame en vos yeux beut la poison amoureuse.
Puis alors que Vesper vient embrunir nos yeux,
Attaché dans le ciel je contemple les cieux,
En qui Dieu nous escrit en notes non obscures
Les sorts et les destins de toutes creatures.
Car luy, en desdaignant (comme font les humains)
D’avoir encre et papier et plume entre les mains,
Par les astres du ciel qui sont ses characteres,
Les choses nous predit et bonnes et contraires :
Mais les hommes chargez de terre et du trespas
Mesprisent tel escrit, et ne le lisent pas.
Or le plus de mon bien pour decevoir ma peine,
C’est de boire à longs traits les eaux de la fontaine
Qui de vostre beau nom se brave**, et en courant
Par les prez vos honneurs va tousjours murmurant,
Et la Royne se dit des eaux de la contree :
Tant vault le gentil soin d’une Muse sacree,
Qui peult vaincre la mort, et les sorts inconstans,
Sinon pour tout jamais, au moins pour un long temps.
Là couché dessus l’herbe en mes discours je pense
Que pour aimer beaucoup j’ay peu de recompense,
Et que mettre son cœur aux Dames si avant,
C’est vouloir peindre en l’onde, et arrester le vent :
M’asseurant toutefois qu’alors que le vieil âge
Aura comme un sorcier changé vostre visage,
Et lors que vos cheveux deviendront argentez,
Et que vos yeux, d’amour ne seront plus hantez,
Que tousjours vous aurez, si quelque soin vous
touche,
En l’esprit mes escrits, mon nom en vostre bouche.
Maintenant que voicy l’an septiéme venir, Ne pensez plus Helene en vos laqs me tenir. La raison m’en delivre, et vostre rigueur dure, Puis il fault que mon age obeysse à Nature. |
Six years have passed, and the seventh year Had returned almost entire to the beginning, When far from affection, desire and love, I spent the whole day in pure liberty And free of all worry which devours the soul I slept from evening to the very moment of dawn, For sole master of myself I wandered at leisure Wherever my feet took me, led by my desire, Having always at hand to act as my guide Aristotle or Plato or learned Euripides, My good mute hosts, who never get annoyed: As [often as] I take them up, just so I put them back. O sweet, useful, honest company! Any other, chattering on, would make my head whirl. Then, bored of my book, I look at the flowers, Leaves, stems, branches, their kinds and colours, And the intersections of their varying forms Painted a hundred ways, yellow, red, violet, Unable to sate myself – just as in a picture – With admiring Nature and her beauties; And with saying, as I talk to the blooming flowers, “He is almost an all-knowing God, Far from the common horde, far from courtiers, Traders in fraud and impudent malice.” Now I wandered alone through wild forests, On the flower-strewn borders of painted river-banks, Now by far-off deserted rocks Now by coppices, green houses of the deer. I liked the course followed by a long river, And seeing wave upon wave lengthening its journey, And one stream attaching itself to another as it rolled on, And draped on the bank I was happy fishing there, Enjoying more the quiet hunt As I disturbed the hidden homes of shellfish, Or drew in trembling with a line the quicksilver Trusting fish, taken with a baited hook, Than might a great prince be pleased having taken in the hunt A stag which he has pursued, panting, all day. Happy you if you had with mutual excitement Swallowed the bait of love as well as I, Whicb I alone swallowed when, all too eagerly, My soul drank in your eyes the poison of love. Now that Evening has come and darkened our eyes, Fastened in the sky, I contemplate the heavens, In which God writes for us in no osbcure way The fates and destinies of all creatures. For he, unwilling (as men do) To have ink and paper and pen in hand, Through the stars in heaven which are his writing He predicts events for us, both good and bad; But men, laden with earthly matter and with death Mistake these writings, or don’t read them. So the greatest good for me, to deceive my pain, Is to drink long draughts of the waters of the spring Which competes with your fair name , and running Through the meadows flows always murmuring your honours And calls itself the queen of streams in the country: Such is worth the gentle care of a sacred Muse Who can overcome death and inconstant fate If not forever, at least for a long time. There, laid on the grass, as I reason I think That for loving much I have little return, And that putting one’s heart before the ladies so much Is like wanting to paint the sea or stop the wind: Telling myself all the while that once old age Has like a wizard changed your appearance, And when your hair has become silvered, And your eyes are no longer haunted by love, Then still you will have, even if care touches you, My words in your soul, my name in your mouth. Now that here has come this seventh year, Think not, Helen, to hold me in your snares. Reason has freed me from them – that and your harshness, And then too my age must obey Nature. |
In stanza 3, the word “enjonchez” is a Ronsardian coinage – ‘be-flowered’ might be a more exact transaltion. At ** in stanza 5 Marty-Laveaux prints “se brave” – the waters of the spring ‘challenge’ Helen’s fair name? He might mean that the spring is named after Helen – but I wonder if this could have been instead “s’abreuve”, ‘flow from’ her fair name? And Ronsard ends as I began at the top of this post: farewell to sonnets, hello to nature poetry!
Oeuvres de Ronsard 