Et puis—bonsoir!
(Life is vain: A little love, A little hate, ... And then—good-day!)
(Life is short: A little hope, A little dream, ... And then—good night!)
Leon Montenaeken.
This haunting little lyric is a literary curiosity from one point of view. In spite of expostulations from the author (a Belgian poet), and repeated public statements by others from time to time, the poem is constantly being wrongly attributed to one or another of the French poets. It appeared in Le Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique, 1887, but had probably been written and published some years before that date. In the Nineteenth Century, September, 1893, William Sharp pointed out that the poem was always being attributed to the wrong author—even Andrew Lang being one of the culprits. The author himself wrote to The Literary World of June 3, 1904, to the same effect. The subject was again spoken of in Notes and Queries, January 5, 1907, when the author’s letter was republished. London Truth also brought the matter up at one time, and probably the same fact has been publicly pointed out elsewhere a hundred times—but the poem continues to be attributed to the wrong author! In the Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Classical Quotations, by H. P. Jones, published so recently as 1913, the verses are ascribed to Alfred de Musset.
There is a third verse, which reads like an answer or retort to the other two:
La vie est telle,
Que Dieu la fit;
Et telle, quelle,
Elle suffit!