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Translated by S. B. W.
SINCE erst that garden, known to fame, | |
| Was lost by Adam,—cruel man!— | |
| Where without a skirt his dame | |
| Round an apple frisked and ran, | |
| I do not think that on this earth, | 5 |
| Mid its most notable plantations, | |
| Has been a spot more praised, more famed, | |
| More choice, more cited, oftener named, | |
| Than thy most tedious park, Versailles! | |
| O gods! O shepherds! rocky vales! | 10 |
| O sulky Termes, satyrs old! | |
| O pleasing scenes! O charming views! | |
| Sweet landscape, where one may behold, | |
| Ranged onion-wise, the little yews; | |
| O quincunx! fountain, bowling-green, | 15 |
| Where every summer Sabbath-e’en, | |
| On pleasure bent, one yawning sees | |
| So many honest families. | |
| And ye, imperial Roman shades! | |
| Ye naiads, pale and stony maids, | 20 |
| Holding your hands outstretched to all | |
| And shivering in your waterfall! | |
| Stiles, modelled in obliging bushes; | |
| Ye formal groves, wherein the thrushes | |
| Seek plaintively their native cry; | 25 |
| Ye water-gods, who vainly try | |
| Beneath your fountains to be dry; | |
| Ye chestnut-trees, be not afraid | |
| That I shall vex your ancient shade, | |
| Knowing that at sundry times | 30 |
| I have perpetrated rhymes: | |
| No such ruthless thought is mine. | |
| No! I swear it by Apollo, | |
| I swear it by the sacred Nine, | |
| By nymphs within their basins hollow, | 35 |
| Who softly on three flints recline, | |
| By yon old faun, quaint dancing-master, | |
| Who trips it on the sward in plaster, | |
| By thee thyself, august abode, | |
| Who know’st save Art no other guest, | 40 |
| I swear by Neptune, watery god, | |
| My verses shall not break your rest! | |
| I know too well what is the matter; | |
| The god of song has plagued you sore; | |
| The poets, with their ceaseless chatter, | 45 |
| You brood in mournful silence o’er; | |
| So many madrigals and odes, | |
| Songs, ballads, sonnets, and epodes, | |
| In which your wonders have been sung | |
| Your tired ears have sadly wrung, | 50 |
| Until you slumber to the chimes | |
| Of these interminable rhymes. | |
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| Amid these haunts where dwells ennui | |
| For mere conformity I slept, | |
| Or ’t was not sleep that o’er me crept, | 55 |
| If, dreaming, one awake may be. | |
| O, say, my friend, do you recall | |
| Three marble steps, of rosy hue, | |
| Upon your way toward the lake, | |
| When that delicious path you take | 60 |
| That leads the orangery through, | |
| Left-turning from the palace wall? | |
| I would wager it was here | |
| Came the monarch without peer, | |
| In the sunset, red and clear, | 65 |
| Down the forest dim to see | |
| Day take flight and disappear,— | |
| If the day could so forget | |
| What was due to etiquette. | |
| But what pretty steps are those! | 70 |
| Cursed be the foot, said we, | |
| That would stain their tints of rose,— | |
| Say, do you remember yet? | |
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| With what soft shades is clouded o’er | |
| This defaced and broken floor! | 75 |
| See the veins of azure deep | |
| Through the paler rose-tints creep; | |
| Trace the slender, branching line | |
| In the marble, pure and fine; | |
| So through huntress Dian’s breast | 80 |
| White and firm as Alpine snows, | |
| The celestial ichor flows; | |
| Such the hand, and still more cold, | |
| Led me leashed in days of old. | |
| Don’t confound these steps so rare | 85 |
| With that other staircase where | |
| The monarch grand, who could not wait, | |
| Waited on Condé, stair by stair, | |
| When he came with weary gait, | |
| War-worn and victorious there. | 90 |
| Near a marble vase are these, | |
| Of graceful shape and white as snow, | |
| Whether ’t is classic or Chinese, | |
| Antique or modern, others know. | |
| I leave the question in their hands; | 95 |
| It is not Gothic, I can swear; | |
| Much I like it where it stands, | |
| Worthy vase, and neighbor kind, | |
| And to think it I ’m inclined | |
| Cousin to my rosy stair, | 100 |
| Guarding it with jealous care. | |
| O, to see in such small space | |
| So much beauty, so much grace! | |
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| Lovely staircase, tell us true, | |
| How many princes, prelates proud, | 105 |
| Kings, marquises,—a pompous crowd,— | |
| And ladies fair, have swept o’er you? | |
| Ah, these last, as I should guess, | |
| Did not vex thee with their state, | |
| Nor didst thou groan beneath the weight | 110 |
| Of ermine cloak or velvet dress: | |
| Tell us of that ambitious band | |
| Whose dainty footstep lightest fell; | |
| Was it the regal Montespan? | |
| Hortense, a novel in her hand? | 115 |
| De Maintenon, with beads to tell? | |
| Or gay Fontanges, with knot and fan? | |
| Didst ever look on La Vallière? | |
| And tell us, marble, if you can, | |
| Which of the twain you thought most fair— | 120 |
| De Parabère or De Sabran? | |
| ’Twixt Sabran and De Parabère | |
| The very Regent could not choose | |
| When supper did his wits confuse. | |
| Didst ever see the great Voltaire, | 125 |
| Who waged such war on superstition, | |
| Who to defy the Christ did dare; | |
| He, who aspired to the position | |
| Of sexton to Cytherea’s fane, | |
| When to the Pompadour he brought | 130 |
| His compliments, and fulsome strain, | |
| The holy water of the court. | |
| Hast beheld the plump Dubarry | |
| Accoutred like a country lass, | |
| Sipping milk, beside thee tarry, | 135 |
| Or tripping barefoot through the grass? | |
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| Stones who know our country’s story, | |
| What a variegated throng | |
| In your bygone days of glory | |
| Down your steps have swept along! | 140 |
| The gay world lounged beneath these trees, | |
| Lords and lackeys drank the breeze; | |
| There was every sort of cattle; | |
| O the duchesses! the tattle, | |
| O the brave red heels that dangled | 145 |
| Round the ladies, flounced and spangled! | |
| O the gossip! O the sighs! | |
| O the flash of brilliant eyes! | |
| O the feathers! O the stoles! | |
| O the powder on their polls! | 150 |
| O the furbelows and breeches | |
| Underneath those spreading beeches! | |
| How many folk—not counting fools— | |
| By the ancient fountain-pools! | |
| Ah! it was the good old time | 155 |
| Of the periwig sublime; | |
| Lives the cockney who dares grudge | |
| One iota of its state, | |
| He deserves, as I adjudge, | |
| On his thick plebeian pate | 160 |
| Now and evermore to wear | |
| Other ornament than hair. | |
| Century of mocking wood, | |
| Age of powder and of paste, | |
| He who does not find thee good | 165 |
| Writes himself devoid of taste, | |
| Lacking sentiment, and stupid, | |
| Votary abhorred by Cupid. | |
| Rosy marble, is ’t not so? | |
| Yet, despite myself, I trow | 170 |
| Though here thy fate is fixed by chance, | |
| Other destiny was thine; | |
| Far away from cloudy France, | |
| Where a warmer sun doth shine, | |
| Near some temple, Greek or Latin, | 175 |
| The fair daughters of the clime | |
| With the scent of heath and thyme | |
| Clinging to their sandalled feet, | |
| Treading thee in rhythmic dance, | |
| Were a burden far more sweet | 180 |
| Than court-ladies, shod with satin. | |
| Could it be for this alone | |
| Nature formed thee in the earth, | |
| In whose beauteous, virgin stone | |
| Genius might have wrought a birth | 185 |
| Every age had joyed to own? | |
| When with trowel and with spade | |
| In this muddy, modern park | |
| Thou in solemn state wert laid, | |
| Then the outraged gods might mark | 190 |
| What the times had brought about,— | |
| Mansard, in his triumph, flout | |
| Praxiteles’ injured shade | |
| There should have come forth of thee | |
| Some new-born divinity. | 195 |
| When the marble-cutters hewed | |
| Through thy noble block their way, | |
| They broke in, with footsteps rude, | |
| Where a Venus sleeping lay; | |
| And the goddess’ wounded veins | 200 |
| Colored thee with roseate stains. | |
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