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Pierre De Ronsard

Selected Poems

Pierre de Ronsard

'Pierre de Ronsard'
Michel Lasne (French, 1590 or before - 1667), The National Gallery of Art

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Translated by A. S. Kline (C) Copyright 2004 All Rights Reserved

This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.

Contents

Translator's note:
Les Amours de Cassandre: XX
Les Amours de Cassandre: XXXVI
Les Amours de Cassandre: XLIII
Les Amours de Cassandre: XLIV
Les Amours de Cassandre: XCIV
Les Amours de Cassandre: CXXXV
Les Amours de Cassandre: CLII
Les Amours de Cassandre: CLX
Les Amours de Cassandre: CLXXII
Les Amours de Cassandre: CLXXIV
Les Amours de Cassandre: CXCII
Les Amours de Cassandre: CXCIII
Les Amours de Marie: VI
Les Amours de Marie: IX
Les Amours de Marie: XLIV
Sur La Mort de Marie: IV
Sonnets Pour Helene Book I: VI
Sonnets Pour Helene Book I: IX
Sonnets Pour Helene Book I: XIX
Sonnets Pour Helene Book I: L
Sonnets Pour Helene Book II: XLII
Sonnets Pour Helene Book II: XLIII
Sonnets Pour Helene Book II: XLIX
Les Odes: A Sa Maistresse
Les Odes: O Fontaine Bellerie
Les Odes: 'Pourquoy comme une jeune poutre'
Index of First Lines
Translator's note:

Most of the Classical references mentioned in the notes are well known, and easily found in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Les Amours de Cassandre: XX

I'd like to turn the deepest of yellows,

Falling, drop by drop, in a golden shower,

Into her lap, my lovely Cassandra's,

As sleep is stealing over her brow.

Then I'd like to be a bull, white as snow,

Transforming myself, for carrying her,

In April, when, through meadows so tender,

A flower, through a thousand flowers, she goes.

I'd like then, the better to ease my pain,

To be Narcissus, and she a fountain,

Where I'd swim all night, at my pleasure:

And I'd like it, too, if Aurora would never

Light day again, or wake me ever,

So that this night could last forever.

Note: Jupiter, disguised as a shower of gold, raped Danae, and as a white bull carried off Europa. Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection. Aurora was the goddess of dawn. Ronsard's Cassandra, was Cassandra Salviati, the daughter of an Italian banker.

Les Amours de Cassandre: XXXVI

At the sorrow I'm made to feel by Love,

Phoebus you used to lament, like me,

When you sang, in exile, passionately,

Near Ilium on the banks of Xanthus.

You bewitched the rivers, flowers and woods,

With your lyre, in vain but beguilingly,

Yet not what your soul felt, the beauty

That dealt what was festering in your blood.

There you turned the flowers pale, with your hue,

There the streams filled with tears for you,

There you lived in hope, but all in vain.

Love grieves me for that same name, this hour,

Near Vendome, on the banks of Loir,

Like a Phoenix born again from my pain.

Note: Cassandra of Troy refused Phoebus Apollo's love.