Mathieu Ropars: et cetera Part 20

Man was saying: "How be sure Beauty's favour to secure, Nor the subtle philtre try?"-- "Love!" said Woman in reply.

THREE MEN AND A WOMAN.

A Summer's dawn and a tranquil sea; But lurid all with smoke: For a bark was burning furiously, What time the morning broke.

Terrible? ay, but risk there was none, For stern the Captain's sway; And when he spoke, each mother's son Could not but choose obey.

"Man the boats!"--the boats were manned, In order, one by one; To pull a hundred miles to land, All under the Summer's sun.

Four stalwart rowers bend to their oars: Four sitters at the stern-- Three men and a woman--silent sit, Watching the vessel burn.

They were no tremblers: each had known Perils by land and deep; But the woman alone would gently moan, And at times, perforce, would weep.

Yet soon the sun was high in heaven, And the sea was a-glow: and then The temper of those men peered out-- Of those three fearless men.

One thought his white hand by the sun would be tanned; One felt they were wrong to risk it, In sweltering heat, with nothing to eat But a bit of dry s.h.i.+p-biscuit.

The third brooded over his handful of freight Going down, uninsured, to the deep: But the woman alone would gently moan, And at times, perforce, would weep;

Till a sense of shame the three o'ercame, And a curious wish to know Why, still unfearing, she gave way To her uncomplaining woe.

"Ah, Sirs!"--she faltered in reply-- "The danger is easily braved: But my husband may hear that the s.h.i.+p is burnt-- And not that we are saved!"

ANOTHER MARBLE FAUN.

_A Translation of La Statue, by Victor Hugo._

He seemed to s.h.i.+ver, for the wind was keen.

'Twas a poor statue underneath a ma.s.s Of leafless branches, with a blackened back And green foot--an old isolated Faun In old deserted park, who, bending forward, Half merged himself in the entangled boughs, Half in his marble settings. He was there, Pensive, and bound to the earth; and, as all things, Devoid of movement, he was there--forgotten.

Trees were around him, whipped by the icy blasts-- Gigantic chestnuts, without leaf or bird, And, like himself, grown old in that same place.

Through the dark network of their undergrowth, Pallid his aspect; and the earth was brown.

Starless and moonless, a rough winter's night Was letting down her lappets o'er the mist.

Trees more remote, with sombre shafts upreared, Each other crossed; and trees remoter still, By distance blurred, threw up to the grey sky Their thousand twigs sharp-pointed, intricate; And posed themselves around; and through the fog Took, on the horizon's verge, the shadowy form Of mighty porcupines in countless herd.

This--nothing more: old Faun, dull sky, dark wood.

Piercing the mist, perchance there might be seen A distant terrace--its long layers of stone Tinted with slimy green; or group of Nymphs, Dimly defined beside a wide-spread basin, And shrinking--fitly in this desolate park-- As once from gazers, from neglect to-day.

The old Faun was laughing. In their dubious haze Leaving the shamed Nymphs and their dreary basin-- The old Faun was laughing--'twas to him I came Moved to compa.s.sion, for these sculptors all Are pitiless ever, and, content with praise, Doom Nymphs to shame, condemn the Fauns to laughter.

Poor helpless marble, how I've pitied it Less often man--the harder of the two.

So then, without a word that might offend His ear difformed--for well the marble hears The voice of thought--I said to him: "You hail From the gay amorous age; O Faun, what saw you, When you were happy? Were you of the Court?

Did you take part in fetes?--For your diversion These Nymphs were fas.h.i.+oned. In this wood, for you, Capable hands mingled the G.o.ds of Greece With Roman Caesars; made rare vases peer Into clear waters; and this garden vext With tortuous labyrinths. When you were happy, O Faun, what saw you? All the secrets tell Of that too vain yet captivating past, Thick set with prudent love-makers, a past In which great poets jostled mighty Kings.

How fresh your memory--you are laughing still!

Speak to me, comely Faun, as you would speak To tree, or zephyr, or untrodden gra.s.s.

From end to end of this well-shaded alley, When near you, with the handsome Lautrec, pa.s.sed The soft-eyed Marguerite, the Bearnaise Queen, Have you, O Greek, O mocker of old days, Have you not sometimes with that oblique eye Winked at the Farnese Hercules?--Alone, In cave as it were of foliage green and moist, Have you, O Faun, considerately turned From side to side when counsel-seekers came, And now advised as shepherd; now as satyr?

Have you sometimes upon this very bench Seen at mid-day, Vincent de Paul instilling Grace into Gondi?--Have you ever thrown That searching glance on Louis with Fontange, On Anne with Buckingham; and did they not Start, with flushed cheeks, to hear your laugh ring forth From corner of the wood?--Was your advice As to the thyrsis or the ivy asked, When, the grand ballet of fantastic form, G.o.d Phoebus, or G.o.d Pan, and all his court Turned the fair head of the fair Montespan, Calling her Amaryllis?--La Fontaine, Flying the courtiers' ears of stone, came he, Tears in his eyelids, to reveal to you The sorrows of his Nymphs of Vaux?--What said Boileau to you, to you, O lettered Faun, Who once with Virgil, in the Eclogue, held That charming dialogue, and deftly made-- Couched on the turf--the heavy spondee dance To the light dactyl's step?--Say, have you seen Young beauties sporting on the sward: Chevreuse Of the swimming eyes, Thiange of airs superb?

Have they sometimes, in rosy-tinted group, Girt you so fondly round, that all at once A straggling sunbeam on a fluttering bosom Marked your lascivious profile?--Has your tree Received beneath the quiet of its shade Pale Mazarin's scarlet winding sheet?--Have you Been honoured with a sight of Moliere In dreamy mood? Has he perchance at times, Dropping at random a melodious verse, In tone familiar--as is the wont 'Twixt demi-G.o.ds--addressed you?--When at eve Homeward hereby the thinker went, has he Who--seeing souls all naked--could not fear Your nudity, in his enquiring mind Confronted you with Man? And did he deem You, spectral cynic, the less sad, less cold, Less wicked, less ironical--comparing Your laugh in marble with our human laugh?"

Under the thickly tangled branches, thus Did I speak to him; he no answer gave-- Not even a murmur. On the pedestal Leaning, I listened; but the past stirred not.

Dumb to my words and to my pity deaf, The Satyr, motionless, was vaguely blanched By the wan glimmer of the dying day.

To see him there, sinister, half drawn out From his dark framing, and by damp discoloured, Brought to one's mind the handle of a sword In torso chiselled--an old rusty sword, Left for long years neglected in its sheath.

I shook my head, and moved myself away.

Then, from the copses, from the dried up boughs Pendent above him, from secret caves Hid in the wood, methought a ghostly voice Came forth and woke an echo in my soul, As in the hollow of an amphora.

"Imprudent poet," thus it seemed to say, "What dost thou here? Leave the forsaken Fauns In peace beneath their trees! Dost thou not know, Poet, that ever it is impious deemed, In desert spots where drowsy shades repose-- Though love itself might prompt thee--to shake down The moss that hangs from ruined centuries, And, with the vain noise of thine ill-timed words, To mar the recollections of the dead?"

Then to the gardens all enwrapped in mist I hurried, dreaming of the vanished days.

And still the tree-tops were with mystery rife; And still, behind me--hieroglyph obscure Of antique alphabet--the lonely Faun Held to his laughter, through the falling night.

I went my way; but yet--in saddened spirit Pondering on all that had my vision crossed, Floating in air or scattered under foot, Confused and blent, beauty and spring and morn, Leaves of old summers, fair ones of old time-- Through all, at distance would my fancy see, In the woods, statues; shadows in the past!

CHARADES.

I.

Look from the prow of thine anch.o.r.ed bark-- Anch.o.r.ed by cla.s.sic sh.o.r.e--and mark, Down fathoms-deep in the purple sea, How Time and the waters have dealt on me

Art lost in the moonless and starless night?

Far-away looming, a light! a light!

Fearlessly steer, for on me 'tis placed, To guide thy bark o'er the trackless waste

Earth knows me, too; and will heave and quake Where my subterranean course I take: And none so aghast at my ravages then, As they whose type was the Sire of men.

But not ever thus; at times I'm seen On the cheek or the neck of Beauty's queen; Or (to favoured mortal alone confest) Tinging the snow upon Beauty's breast.

So, whether above the waves, or below, Or beneath the Earth, or on breast of snow, Linked with the past, or alive to-day, Tell who I am--if tell ye may.

II.

My lady calls; my First obeys-- Nor less his lord's behest: In bower and hall, in olden days, My First was in request.

Yet 'tis my First that tells us now What then my First was doing; How he went forth to war, and how He prospered in his wooing.