’DU RYS DE MADAME D’ALLEBRET

’Elle a tres bien ceste gorge d’albastre,
Ce doulx parler, ce cler tainct, ces beaux yeulx: 
Mais en effect, ce petit rys follastre,
C’est a mon gre ce qui lui sied le mieulx;
Elle en pourroit les chemins et les lieux
Ou elle passe a plaisir inciter;
Et si ennuy me venoit contrister
Tant que par mort fust ma vie abbatue,
Il me fauldroit pour me resusciter
Que ce rys la duguel elle me tue.’

’How fair those locks which now the light wind stirs! 
What eyes she has, and what a perfect arm! 
And yet methinks that little laugh of hers—­
That little laugh—­is still her crowning charm. 
Where’er she passes, countryside or town,
The streets make festa and the fields rejoice. 
Should sorrow come, as ’twill, to cast me down,
Or Death, as come he must, to hush my voice,
Her laugh would wake me just as now it thrills me—­
That little, giddy laugh wherewith she kills me.’

’Tis the very laugh of Millamant in The Way of the World!  ’I would rather,’ cried Hazlitt, ’have seen Mrs. Abington’s Millamant than any Rosalind that ever appeared on the stage.’  Such wishes are idle.  Hazlitt never saw Mrs. Abington’s Millamant.  I have seen Miss Ethel Irving’s Millamant, dulce ridentem, and it was that little giddy laugh of hers that reminded me of Marot’s Epigram and of Frederick Locker’s paraphrase.  So do womanly charms endure from generation to generation, and it is one of the duties of poets to record them.

In 1867 Mr. Locker published his Lyra Elegantiarun.  A Collection of Some of the Best Specimens of Vers de Societe and Vers d’Occasion in the English Languages by Deceased Authors.  In his preface Locker gave what may now be fairly called the ‘classical’ definition of the verses he was collecting. ‘Vers de societe and vers d’occasion should’ (so he wrote) ’be short, elegant, refined and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by heightened sentiment, and often playful.  The tone should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic and rather in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be marked by tasteful moderation, high finish and completeness; for however trivial the subject-matter may be—­indeed, rather in proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of composition and perfection of execution should be strictly enforced.  The definition may be further illustrated by a few examples of pieces, which, from the absence of some of the foregoing qualities, or from the excess of others, cannot be properly regarded as vers de societe, though they may bear a certain generic resemblance to that species of poetry.  The ballad of “John Gilpin,” for example, is too broadly and simply ludicrous; Swift’s “Lines on the Death of Marlborough,” and Byron’s “Windsor Poetics,” are too savage and