SYLVIE ET AURÉLIE.
IN MEMORY OF GÉRARD DE NERVAL.
Two loves there were, and one was born
Between the sunset and the rain;
Her singing voice went through the corn,
Her dance was woven 'neath the thorn,
On grass the fallen blossoms stain;
And suns may set and moons may wane,
But this love comes no more again.
There were two loves, and one made white
Thy singing lips and golden hair;
Born of the city's mire and light,
The shame and splendour of the night,
She trapped and fled thee unaware;
Not through the lamplight and the rain
Shalt thou behold this love again.
Go forth and seek, by wood and bill,
Thine ancient love of dawn and dew;
There comes no voice from mere or rill,
Her dance is over, fallen still
The ballad burdens that she knew:
And thou must wait for her in vain,
Till years bring back thy youth again.
That other love, afield, afar
Fled the light love, with lighter feet.
Nay, though thou seek where gravesteads are,
And flit in dreams from star to star,
That dead love thou shalt never meet,
Till through bleak dawn and blowing rain
Thy soul shall find her soul again.
ANDREW LANG.
[GÉRARD DE NERVAL.]
Il a toujours cherché dans le monde
ce que le monde ne pouvait plus lui
donner.
LUDOVIC HALÉVY.
He has been a sick man all his life.
He was always a seeker after something
in the world that is there in no
satisfying measure, or not at all.
WALTER PATER.
I.
Of Gérard de Nerval, whose true name was Gérard Labrunie, it has been finely said: "His was the most beautiful of all the lost souls of the French Romance."(*) Born in 1808, he came to his death by suicide one dark winter night towards the end of January.
The story of this life and its tragic finale was well known at the time to all men of letters,—Théophile Gautier, Paul de Saint-Victor, Arsène Houssaye,—friends who never forgot the young poet even after he went the way that madness lies. For it was insanity,—a nostalgia of the soul always imminent—that led him into the squalid Rue de la Vieille-Lanterne, in which long forgotten corner of old Paris his dead body was found one bleak belated dawn. And this was forty years ago.