COLINETTE
FRANCE your country, as we know;
Room enough for guessing yet,
What lips now or long ago,
Kissed and named you—Colinette.
In what fields from sea to sea,
By what stream your home was set,
Loire or Seine was glad of thee,
Marne or Rhone, O Colinette?
Did you stand with “maidens ten,
Fairer maids were never seen,”
When the young king and his men
Passed among the orchards green?
Nay, old ballads have a note
Mournful we would fain forget;
No such sad old air should float
Round your young brows, Colinette.
Say, did Ronsard sing to you.
Shepherdess to lull his pain,
When the court went wandering through
Rose pleasances of Touraine?
Ronsard and his famous Rose
Long are dust the breezes fret;
You, within the garden close,
Have I seen you proud and gay,
With a patched and perfumed beau,
Dancing through the summer day,
Misty summer of Watteau?
Nay, so sweet a maid as you
Never walked a minuet
With the splendid courtly crew;
Nay, forgive me, Colinette.
Not from Greuze’s canvases
Do you cast a glance, a smile;
You are not as one of these,
Yours is beauty without guile.
Round your maiden brows and hair
Maidenhood and Childhood met,
Crown and kiss you, sweet and fair,
New art’s blossom, Colinette.
Andrew Lang.
BALLADE OF DEAD LADIES
(After Villon)
NAY, tell me now in what strange air
The Roman Flora dwells to-day;
Where Archippiada hides, and where
Beautiful Thais has passed away?
Whence answers Echo, afield, astray,
By mere or stream,—around, below?
Lovelier she than a woman of clay;
Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?
Where is wise Héloise, that care
Brought on Abeilard, and dismay?
All for her love he found a snare,
A maimed poor monk in orders grey;
And where’s the Queen who willed to slay
Buridan, that in a sack must go
Afloat down Seine,—a perilous way—
Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?
Where’s that White Queen, a lily rare,
With her sweet song, the Siren’s lay?
Where’s Bertha Broad-foot, Beatrice fair?
Alys and Ermengarde, where are they?
Good Joan, whom English did betray
In Rouen town, and burned her? No,
Maiden and Queen, no man may say;
Nay, but where is the last year’s snow?