Où le soleil non trop excessif est; VIII Chant de May et de Vertu Voulentiers en ce moys icy Ou pour estre ailleurs plus contens; N'y a si belle dame aussi De qui la beauté ne chancelle; Celle dont je dy tout cecy, ENVOY Prince, fais amye immortelle, JOACHIM DU BELLAY (b. Liré, near Angers, 1525; d. 1560) LIKE Ronsard his friend, du Bellay was deaf, and he was thus debarred from the worldly success to which, as a member of a distinguished family of prelates and diplomats, he might otherwise have aşpired. His short and uneventful life was that of a lonely scholar, brightened from 1547 by the friendship of his brother poet and saddened by absence from his Angevin home, as when he lived in Rome (1551-54) with his relative Jean, Cardinal du Bellay. Besides his epoch-making manifesto of 1549, which, however, has been found to be largely the translation of an Italian treatise, du Bellay's work includes Olive (1549), is first collection of poems, addressed to Mlle. de Viole; Les Antiquités de Rome (1558: translated by Spenser), lescribing the grandeur of the city and the meanness of he inhabitants; and Les Regrets (1559), containing more atire of the modern Romans and wistful thoughts of ome. His poems reveal without reserve a melancholy mind C that muses on the flight of time and the passing of human greatness. He is a master of the sonnet. While he shows the same faults as Ronsard, du Bellay is perhaps a greater artist and might, had he lived longer, have surpassed his friend. EXTRACTS IX. That moral beauty is lasting. X. Soaring towards the ideal. XI. A delicate evocation of a summer day, inspired by the sixteenth century Latin poem of Navagero (Naugetius). XII. In Rome the poet of Anjou longs for his native air. IX La Vertu dure de tout temps (Olive, XXII., 1549) Tout ce qu'ici la nature environne L'ire du ciel facilement estonne Les fruicts d'esté qui craignent la froidure; De ton printemps les fleurettes seichées A ces doux fruicts, en toy meurs 1 devant l'aage, Ne fait l'esté, ny l'automne dommage, Ny la rigueur de la froide saison. 1 mûrs. X La Beauté idéale (Olive, CXIII., 1549) Si nostre vie est moins qu'une journée Que songes-tu, mon ame emprisonnée ? Là est le bien que tout esprit desire, Là, ô mon ame, au plus hault ciel guidée, |