No More Learning

Ronsard refers to Neo-Platonic metaphysics in criticising Plato's 'Idealism'. Compare John Donne's poem 'The Ecstasie'. Donne like Marvell seems to have been influenced by Ronsard and his peers.

Sonnets Pour Helene Book II: XLII

In these long winter nights when the idle Moon

Steers her chariot so slowly on its way,

When the cockerel so tardily calls the day,

When night to the troubled soul seems years through:

I would have died of misery if not for you,

In shadowy form, coming to ease my fate,

Utterly naked in my arms, to lie and wait,

Sweetly deceiving me with a specious view.

The real you is fierce, of pitiless cruelty:

The false you one enjoys, in true intimacy,

I sleep beside your ghost, rest by an illusion:

Nothing's denied me. So kind sleep deceives

My loving sorrows with your false reality.

In love there is no harm in self-delusion.

Sonnets Pour Helene Book II: XLIII

When you are truly old, beside the evening candle,

Sitting by the fire, winding wool and spinning,

Murmuring my verses, you'll marvel then, in saying,

'Long ago, Ronsard sang me, when I was beautiful. '

There'll be no serving-girl of yours, who hears it all,

Even if, tired from toil, she's already drowsing,

Fails to rouse at the sound of my name's echoing,

And blesses your name, then, with praise immortal.

I'll be under the earth, a boneless phantom,

At rest in the myrtle groves of the dark kingdom:

You'll be an old woman hunched over the fire,

Regretting my love for you, your fierce disdain,

So live, believe me: don't wait for another day,

Gather them now the roses of life, and desire.

Note: W. B. Yeats' free adaptation is the well-known poem 'When you are old and grey and full of sleep' (In 'The Rose'). The myrtle groves are those of the Underworld in Classical mythology.

Sonnets Pour Helene Book II: XLIX

That night Love drew you down into the ballroom

To dance a sweet love-ballet with subtle art,

Your eyes though it was evening, brought the day

Like so many lightning flashes through the gloom.
A dance divine, that, time after time, resumed,

Broke, and re-formed again, circling every way,

Merged and then parted, turned, then turned away,

Mirroring the curves Meander's course assumed.

Now rounded, now stretched out, now narrowing,

Now tapering, now triangular, now forming

Ranks like flights of Cranes in frost-escaping line.

I'm wrong, you didn't dance: your feet were fluttering

Over the surface of the ground, your body altering,

Its nature transformed that night to the divine.

Note: The Meander was the river in Asia Minor (Menderes Nehri in modern Turkey) noted for its sinuous curves. The flight of Cranes is most famously mentioned in Homer's Iliad.

Les Odes: A Sa Maistresse

Sweetheart, let's see if the rose

That in morning light disclosed

Her crimson dress to the Sun,

This evening has lost once more

The folds of her crimson tussore,

And her, as your, complexion.

Ah! See how in such short space

My sweetheart, she's filled the place

With all the beauty's she's lost!

O, so unnatural Nature,

You whose ephemeral flower

Lasts only from dawn to dusk!

Then believe me, my sweetheart, do,

While time still flowers for you,

In its freshest novelty,

Cull, ah cull your youthful bloom:

As it blights this flower, the doom

Of age will blight your beauty.

Les Odes: O Fontaine Bellerie

O Fount of Bellerie,

Fountain sweet to see,

Dear to our Nymphs when, lo,

Waves hide them at your source

Fleeing the Satyr so,

Who follows them, in his course,

To the borders of your flow.

Eternal Nymph, you're the grace

Of my ancestral place:

So, in this fresh, green view,

See your Poet, who brings

An un-weaned kid to you,

Whose horns, in offering,

Bud from its brow in youth.

In summer I sleep, and lie

On your grassy banks, or write

In your green willows immersed,

Seeking to spread your glory

Through all the universe,

Demanding that Memory

Keeps you alive, through verse.

The flames of the Dog Days keep

Far from your green steep,

Because your shade around

Is always close and deep,

For the shepherds changing ground,

The weary oxen, the sheep,

And the cattle that wander round.

Rejoice: forever you'll be

The Princess of Founts to me,

Singing your issuing

From broken stone, a force,

That, as a gurgling spring,

Bring water from your source,

An endless dancing thing.

Note: Bellerie was situated on his family estate La Possonniere.