Scarce more fortunate, for long, than thy monument was thy memory.  Thou hast not encountered, Master, in the Paradise of Poets, Messieurs Malherbe, De Balzac, and Boileau—­Boileau who spoke of thee as Ce poe’te orgueilleux tre’buche’ de si haut!

These gallant gentlemen, I make no doubt, are happy after their own fashion, backbiting each other and thee in the Paradise of Critics.  In their time they wrought thee much evil, grumbling that thou wrotest in Greek and Latin (of which tongues certain of them had but little skill), and blaming thy many lyric melodies and the free flow of thy lines.  What said M. de Balzac to M. Chapelain?  ’M. de Malherbe, M. de Grasse, and yourself must be very little poets, if Ronsard be a great one.’  Time has brought in his revenges, and Messieurs Chapelain and De Grasse are as well forgotten as thou art well remembered.  Men could not always be deaf to thy sweet old songs, nor blind to the beauty of thy roses and thy loves.  When they took the wax out of their ears that M. Boileau had given them lest they should hear the singing of thy Sirens, then they were deaf no longer, then they heard the old deaf poet singing and made answer to his lays.  Hast thou not heard these sounds? have they not reached thee, the voices and the lyres of The’ophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset?  Methinks thou hast marked them, and been glad that the old notes were ringing again and the old French lyric measures tripping to thine ancient harmonies, echoing and replying to the Muses of Horace and Catullus.  Returning to Nature, poets returned to thee.  Thy monument has perished, but not thy music, and the Prince of Poets has returned to his own again in a glorious Restoration.

Through the dust and smoke of ages, and through the centuries of wars we strain our eyes and try to gain a glimpse of thee, Master, in thy good days, when the Muses walked with thee.  We seem to mark thee wandering silent through some little village, or dreaming in the woods, or loitering among thy lonely places, or in gardens where the roses blossom among wilder flowers, or on river banks where the whispering poplars and sighing reeds make answer to the murmur of the waters.  Such a picture hast thou drawn of thyself in the summer afternoons.

  Je m’en vais pourmener tantost parmy la plaine,
  Tantost en un village, et tantost en un bois,
  Et tantost par les lieux solitaires et cois. 
  J’aime fort les jardins qui sentent le sauvage,
  J’aime le flot de l’eau qui gazou’ille au rivage.

Still, methinks, there was a book in the hand of the grave and learned poet; still thou wouldst carry thy Horace, thy Catullus, thy Theocritus, through the gem-like weather of the Renouveau, when the woods were enamelled with flowers, and the young Spring was lodged, like a wandering prince, in his great palaces hung with green: 

  Orgueilleux de ses fleurs, enfle’ de sa jeunesse,
  Loge’ comme un grand Prince en ses vertes maisons!