Départ :
Le jour que votre voile aux vents se recourba,
Et de nos yeux pleurants les vostres déroba,
Ce jour la même voile emporta loin de France
Les Muses, qui songeoient y faire demourance.
(The day whereon the breeze did fill the sails of the galleon which snatched you from our streaming eyes, carried, likewise, far away from France the Muses, who had thought to make that land their dwelling place.) In this same poem the writer, with a heart ever responsive to all that was young and charming, wished to celebrate in the written word that which his ardent eyes would never again behold in the quick, warm flesh. The genuine grief which pulled at his heart strings inspired him to pen a dirge which alone would make him rank high among the poets of his day.
Comment pourroient chanter les bouches des poètes,
Quand par vostre départ les Muses sont muettes?
Tout ce quâil est de beau ne se garde longtemps,
Les roses et les lys ne règnent quâun printemps.
Ainsi votre beauté, seulement apparu
Quinze ans en notre France, est soudain disparue,
Comme on voit dâun éclair sâévanouir le trait,
Et dâelle nâa laissé sinon le regret,
Sinon le déplaisir qui me remet sans cesse
Au cÅur le souvenir dâune telle princesse.
(How can the mouths of poets pour forth song since your departure has struck the Muses dumb? Beauty lives no longer than a day, roses and lilies die when spring is dead. Thus has your flowerlike loveliness passed away after gracing our France for fifteen years, passed with the speed of a lightning flash, leaving behind it nothing but regret, and a grief which continually calls to mind the memory of so radiant a princess.) Whereas by the court and nobles and gentry of France the absent Queen was soon to be forgotten, the poets of that fair realm were to remain for long her faithful servitors; for to the poetic imagination misfortune invests the sufferer with fresh nobility, and she whom the poets had sung on account of her beauty would henceforward be doubly loved because of the evils which befell her. To the end of her days Mary Stuart kept their faithful homage, and their tuneful lyrics accompanied her even as she mounted the scaffold. When a person of intrinsic worth lives a life that is a genuine poem, a true drama, a beautiful saga and ballad, poets will never be lacking to clothe it anew and to breathe into it the fresh and vibrant imagery of inspiration.
A splendid white galleon was riding at anchor in Calais roads. She was a French flagship, flying the Scottish colours as well. Here, on 14th August 1561, Mary Stuart went aboard, accompanied by three of her uncles, a few of the most distinguished noblemen and the four Marys, her inseparable companions. Two other vessels formed an escort. But the ship had not left the inner harbour, her sails had not been fully unfurled, when a portent cast a shadow on this voyage into the unknown. A vessel entering the port the Queen had barely left struck the bar, foundered and sank. Mary, greatly agitated, called upon her captain to save the drowning mariners. But the accident had occurred too suddenly for human aid to be of any avail. This catastrophe was, indeed, a bad omen for the young and inexperienced woman who was leaving the protection of a land she loved to take up her duties as Queen and ruler in a country that was strange and foreign to her.
Was it a secret dread of what fate held in store for her, was it a keen sense of loss as she left what had hitherto been her homeland, was it a feeling that she would not return to these shores, which brought the tears to eyes whose gaze never for a moment left the retreating landscape, the country where she had spent her carefree girlhood, where she had been so happy because no worries had been allowed to approach her? Her passionate grief on bidding farewell to France has been touchingly described for us by Brantôme:
So soon as the ship had steered
Le jour que votre voile aux vents se recourba,
Et de nos yeux pleurants les vostres déroba,
Ce jour la même voile emporta loin de France
Les Muses, qui songeoient y faire demourance.
(The day whereon the breeze did fill the sails of the galleon which snatched you from our streaming eyes, carried, likewise, far away from France the Muses, who had thought to make that land their dwelling place.) In this same poem the writer, with a heart ever responsive to all that was young and charming, wished to celebrate in the written word that which his ardent eyes would never again behold in the quick, warm flesh. The genuine grief which pulled at his heart strings inspired him to pen a dirge which alone would make him rank high among the poets of his day.
Comment pourroient chanter les bouches des poètes,
Quand par vostre départ les Muses sont muettes?
Tout ce quâil est de beau ne se garde longtemps,
Les roses et les lys ne règnent quâun printemps.
Ainsi votre beauté, seulement apparu
Quinze ans en notre France, est soudain disparue,
Comme on voit dâun éclair sâévanouir le trait,
Et dâelle nâa laissé sinon le regret,
Sinon le déplaisir qui me remet sans cesse
Au cÅur le souvenir dâune telle princesse.
(How can the mouths of poets pour forth song since your departure has struck the Muses dumb? Beauty lives no longer than a day, roses and lilies die when spring is dead. Thus has your flowerlike loveliness passed away after gracing our France for fifteen years, passed with the speed of a lightning flash, leaving behind it nothing but regret, and a grief which continually calls to mind the memory of so radiant a princess.) Whereas by the court and nobles and gentry of France the absent Queen was soon to be forgotten, the poets of that fair realm were to remain for long her faithful servitors; for to the poetic imagination misfortune invests the sufferer with fresh nobility, and she whom the poets had sung on account of her beauty would henceforward be doubly loved because of the evils which befell her. To the end of her days Mary Stuart kept their faithful homage, and their tuneful lyrics accompanied her even as she mounted the scaffold. When a person of intrinsic worth lives a life that is a genuine poem, a true drama, a beautiful saga and ballad, poets will never be lacking to clothe it anew and to breathe into it the fresh and vibrant imagery of inspiration.
A splendid white galleon was riding at anchor in Calais roads. She was a French flagship, flying the Scottish colours as well. Here, on 14th August 1561, Mary Stuart went aboard, accompanied by three of her uncles, a few of the most distinguished noblemen and the four Marys, her inseparable companions. Two other vessels formed an escort. But the ship had not left the inner harbour, her sails had not been fully unfurled, when a portent cast a shadow on this voyage into the unknown. A vessel entering the port the Queen had barely left struck the bar, foundered and sank. Mary, greatly agitated, called upon her captain to save the drowning mariners. But the accident had occurred too suddenly for human aid to be of any avail. This catastrophe was, indeed, a bad omen for the young and inexperienced woman who was leaving the protection of a land she loved to take up her duties as Queen and ruler in a country that was strange and foreign to her.
Was it a secret dread of what fate held in store for her, was it a keen sense of loss as she left what had hitherto been her homeland, was it a feeling that she would not return to these shores, which brought the tears to eyes whose gaze never for a moment left the retreating landscape, the country where she had spent her carefree girlhood, where she had been so happy because no worries had been allowed to approach her? Her passionate grief on bidding farewell to France has been touchingly described for us by Brantôme:
So soon as the ship had steered
Similar Books
