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(Peter Ronsard loquitur)
“HEIGHO,” yawned one day King Francis, | |
| “Distance all value enhances! | |
| When a man’s busy, why, leisure | |
| Strikes him as wonderful pleasure— | |
| ’Faith, and at leisure once is he? | 5 |
| Straightway he wants to be busy. | |
| Here we ’ve got peace; and aghast I ’m | |
| Caught thinking war the true pastime! | |
| Is there a reason in metre? | |
| Give us your speech, Master Peter!” | 10 |
| I who, if mortal dare say so, | |
| Ne’er am at loss with my Naso, | |
| “Sire,” I replied, “joys prove cloudlets: | |
| Men are the merest Ixions”— | |
| Here the King whistled aloud, “Let ’s | 15 |
| .. Heigho .. go look at our lions!” | |
| Such are the sorrowful chances | |
| If you talk fine to King Francis. | |
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| And so, to the court-yard proceeding, | |
| Our company, Francis was leading, | 20 |
| Increased by new followers tenfold | |
| Before he arrived at the penfold; | |
| Lords, ladies, like clouds which bedizen | |
| At sunset the western horizon. | |
| And Sir De Lorge pressed ’mid the foremost | 25 |
| With the dame he professed to adore most— | |
| On, what a face! One by fits eyed | |
| Her, and the horrible pitside; | |
| For the penfold surrounded a hollow | |
| Which led where the eye scarce dared follow, | 30 |
| And shelved to the chamber secluded | |
| Where Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded. | |
| The King hailed his keeper, an Arab | |
| As glossy and black as a scarab, | |
| And bade him make sport and at once stir | 35 |
| Up and out of his den the old monster. | |
| They opened a hole in the wire-work | |
| Across it, and dropped there a firework, | |
| And fled; one’s heart’s beating redoubled; | |
| A pause, while the pit’s mouth was troubled, | 40 |
| The blackness and silence so utter, | |
| By the firework’s slow sparkling and sputter, | |
| Then earth in a sudden contortion | |
| Gave out to our gaze her abortion! | |
| Such a brute! Were I friend Clement Marot | 45 |
| (Whose experience of Nature ’s but narrow, | |
| And whose faculties move in no small mist | |
| When he versifies David the Psalmist) | |
| I should study that brute to describe you | |
| Illum Juda Leonem de Tribu! | 50 |
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| One’s whole blood grew curdling and creepy | |
| To see the black mane, vast and heapy, | |
| The tail in the air stiff and straining, | |
| The wide eyes, nor waxing nor waning, | |
| As over the barrier which bounded | 55 |
| His platform, and us who surrounded | |
| The barrier, they reached and they rested | |
| On the space that might stand him in best stead; | |
| For, who knew, he thought, what the amazement, | |
| The eruption of clatter and blaze meant, | 60 |
| And if, in this minute, of wonder, | |
| No outlet ’mid lightning and thunder, | |
| Lay broad, and, his shackles all shivered, | |
| The lion at last was delivered? | |
| Ay, that was the open sky o’erhead! | 65 |
| And you saw by the flash on his forehead, | |
| By the hope in those eyes wide and steady, | |
| He was leagues in the desert already, | |
| Driving the flocks up the mountain, | |
| Or catlike couched hard by the fountain, | 70 |
| To waylay the date-gathering negress: | |
| So guarded he entrance or egress. | |
| “How he stands!” quoth the King; “we may well swear, | |
| No novice, we ’ve won our spurs elsewhere, | |
| And so can afford the confession, | 75 |
| We exercise wholesome discretion | |
| In keeping aloof from his threshold; | |
| Once hold you, those jaws want no fresh hold, | |
| Their first would too pleasantly purloin | |
| The visitor’s brisket or surloin: | 80 |
| But who ’s he would prove so foolhardy? | |
| Not the best man of Marignam, pardie!” | |
| |
| The sentence no sooner was uttered, | |
| Than over the rails a glove fluttered, | |
| Fell close to the lion, and rested: | 85 |
| The dame ’t was, who flung it and jested | |
| With life so, De Lorge had been wooing | |
| For months past; he sate there pursuing | |
| His suit, weighing out with nonchalance | |
| Fine speeches like gold from a balance. | 90 |
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| Sound the trumpet, no true knight ’s a tarrier! | |
| De Lorge made one leap at the barrier, | |
| Walked straight to the glove—while the lion | |
| Ne’er moved, kept his far-reaching eye on | |
| The palm-tree-edged desert spring’s sapphire, | 95 |
| And the musky oiled skin of the Kaffir— | |
| Picked it up, and as calmly retreated, | |
| Leaped back where the lady was seated, | |
| And full in the face of its owner | |
Flung the glove—
“Your heart’s queen, you dethrone her? | 100 |
| So should I”—cried the King—“’t was mere vanity, | |
| Not love, set that task to humanity!” | |
| Lords and ladies alike turned with loathing | |
| From such a proved wolf in sheep’s clothing. | |
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| Not so I; for I caught an expression | 105 |
| In her brow’s undisturbed self-possession | |
| Amid the Court’s scoffing and merriment— | |
| As if from no pleasing experiment | |
| She rose, yet of pain not much heedful | |
| So long as the process was needful— | 110 |
| As if she had tried in a crucible, | |
| To what “speeches like gold” were reducible, | |
| And, finding the finest prove copper, | |
| Felt the smoke in her face was but proper; | |
| To know what she had not to trust to, | 115 |
| Was worth all the ashes, and dust too. | |
| She went out ’mid hooting and laughter; | |
| Clement Marot stayed; I followed after, | |
| And asked, as a grace, what it all meant— | |
| If she wished not the rash deed’s recallment? | 120 |
| “For I”—so I spoke—“am a poet: | |
| Human nature behooves that I know it!” | |
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| She told me, “Too long had I heard | |
| Of the deed proved alone by the word: | |
| For my love—what De Lorge would not dare! | 125 |
| With my scorn—what De Lorge could compare! | |
| And the endless descriptions of death | |
| He would brave when my lip formed a breath, | |
| I must reckon as braved, or, of course, | |
| Doubt his word—and moreover, perforce, | 130 |
| For such gifts as no lady could spurn, | |
| Must offer my love in return. | |
| When I looked on your lion, it brought | |
| All the dangers at once to my thought, | |
| Encountered by all sorts of men, | 135 |
| Before he was lodged in his den— | |
| From the poor slave whose club or bare hands | |
| Dug the trap, set the snare on the sands, | |
| With no King and no Court to applaud, | |
| By no shame, should he shrink, overawed, | 140 |
| Yet to capture the creature made shift, | |
| That his rude boys might laugh at the gift, | |
| To the page who last leaped o’er the fence | |
| Of the pit, on no greater pretence | |
| Than to get back the bonnet he dropped, | 145 |
| Lest his pay for a week should be stopped— | |
| So, wiser I judged it to make | |
| One trial what ‘death for my sake’ | |
| Really meant, while the power was yet mine, | |
| Than to wait until time should define | 150 |
| Such a phrase not so simply as I, | |
| Who took it to mean just ‘to die.’ | |
| The blow a glove gives is but weak— | |
| Does the mark yet discolor my cheek? | |
| But when the heart suffers a blow, | 155 |
| Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?” | |
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| I looked, as away she was sweeping, | |
| And saw a youth eagerly keeping | |
| As close as he dared to the doorway: | |
| No doubt that a noble should more weigh | 160 |
| His life than befits a plebeian; | |
| And yet, had our brute been Nemean— | |
| (I judge by a certain calm fervor | |
| The youth stepped with, forward to serve her) | |
| —He ’d have scarce thought you did him the worst turn | 165 |
| If you whispered, “Friend, what you ’d get, first earn!” | |
| And when, shortly after, she carried | |
| Her shame from the Court, and they married, | |
| To that marriage some happiness, maugre | |
| The voice of the court I dared augur. | 170 |
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| For De Lorge, he made women with men vie, | |
| Those in wonder and praise, these in envy; | |
| And in short stood so plain a head taller | |
| That he wooed and won … How do you call her? | |
| The beauty, that rose in the sequel | 175 |
| To the King’s love, who loved her a week well; | |
| And ’t was noticed he never would honor | |
| De Lorge (who looked daggers upon her) | |
| With the easy commission of stretching | |
| His legs in the service, and fetching | 180 |
| His wife, from her chamber, those straying | |
| Sad gloves she was always mislaying, | |
| While the King took the closet to chat in— | |
| But of course this adventure came pat in; | |
| And never the King told the story, | 185 |
| How bringing a glove brought such glory, | |
| But the wife smiled—“His nerves are grown firmer— | |
| Mine he brings now and utters no murmur!” | |
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| Venienti occurrite morbo! | |
| With which moral I drop my theorbo. | 190 |
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