"Aubanel—and you will say as I do, when you have read his book—is a wild pomegranate-tree. The Provençal public, whom his first poems had pleased so much, was beginning to say,—'But what is our Aubanel doing, that we no longer hear him sing?'"
Then follows an exposition of the hopeless passion of the poet,—how he took for motto,
"Quau canto,
Soun mau encanto."
Hence the three books of poems now before us,—"The Book of Love," "Twilight," and "The Book of Death." "The Book of Love," "a thing excessively rare," as we are told in the Preface, "but this one written in good faith," opens with a couplet that is a key to the whole volume:—
"I am sick at heart,
And will not be cured."
We subjoin a literal translation of the eleventh song, line for line:—
De-la-man-d'eilà de la mar,
Dins mis ouro de pantaiage,
Souvènti-fes iéu fau un viage,
Iéu fau souvènt un viage amar,
De-la-man-d'eilà, de la mar."
etc., etc.
"Far away, beyond the seas,
In my hours of reverie,
Oftentimes I make a voyage,
I often make a bitter voyage,
Far away, beyond the seas.
"Yonder far, towards the Dardanelles,
With the ships I glide away,
Whose long masts pierce the sky;
Towards my loved one do I go,
Yonder far, towards the Dardanelles.
"With the great white clouds sailing on,
Driven by the wind, their master-shepherd,
The great clouds which before the stars
Pass onwards like white flocks,
With the clouds I go sailing on.