"Le travail me retient bien tard sur ces toitures. . . ."
He then begins to wonder what he would see if, like Asmodee in the Diable boiteux, he could have the roof taken off, so that the various rooms could be exposed to view. Alas! he would not always find the concord of the Golden Age.
Que de fois contemolant cet amas de maisons
Quetreignent nos remparts couronnes de gazons,
Et ces faubourgs naissants que la ville trop pleine
Pour ses enfants nouveaux eleve dans la plaine.
Immobiles troufieaux ou notre clocher gris
Semble un patre au milieu de ses blanches brebis,
Jai pense que, malgre notre angoisse et nos peines,
Sous ces toits paternels il existait des haines,
Et que des murs plus forts que ces murs mitoyens
Separent ici-bas les coeurs des citoyens.
This was an appeal to concord, and all brothers of humanity were invited to rally to the watchword.
The intention was no doubt very good. Then, too, murs mitoyens was an extremely rich and unexpected rhyme for citoyens. This was worthy indeed of a man of that party.
Another of the poems greatly admired by George Sand was Le Forcat.
Regarder le forcat sur la poutre equarrie
Poser son sein hale que le remords carie. . .
Certainly if Banville were to lay claim to having invented rhymes that are puns, we could only say that he was a plagiarist after reading Charles Poncy.
In another poem addressed to the rich, entitled L'hiver, the poet notices with grief that the winter
. . . qui remplit les salons, les Watres,
Remplit aussi la Morgue et les amphitheatres.