'And our hearts, though true and brave,
Still like muffled drums are beating,
Funeral marches to the grave'?
Still it turns to a question of dates. Both of them are living poets. Who wrote his lines first? But there is assuredly no question of dates, or question of any kind whatever, immediately after, when you find,
'Maint joyau dort enseveli
Dans les ténèbres et l'oubli
Bien loin des pioches et des sondes;
Mainte fleur épanche à regret,
Son parfum doux comme un secret,
Dans les solitudes profondes.'
Can anybody render into French verse, more literally, Gray's beautiful but hackneyed lines,
'Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air'?
Charles Baudelaire died only a short time ago.
Page 273.
The Oxen. Pierre Dupont is the poet of the sorrows and joys of the poor. He is not a scholar, and there is not much art in his poetry, but he has great natural gifts which compensate for all his deficiencies. His 'Chant des Ouvriers' has long been popular, and if the reader reads French at all, he must have come across—
'Mal vêtus, logés dans des trous,
Sous les combles, dans les décombres,
Nous vivons avec les hiboux
Et les larrons amis des ombres:
Cependant notre sang vermeil
Coule impétueux dans nos veines;
Nous nous plairions au grand soleil,
Et sous les rameaux verts des chênes!'
Page 278.
The Lost Path. André Lemoyne was born at St. Jean-d'Angély about 1823. 'Honourable and independent'—says a French critic,—'as well as discreet and modest, his life flows in the midst of his family and his friends in the practice of duty and the worship of his art.' Admitted as a barrister, he renounced practice and contented himself with an employment in the well-known house of M. Didot. Lemoyne has not written much, but what little he has written is worthy of high praise. Besides the piece we translate here, there are others which may be read with pleasure, and amongst these we may name 'Ecce Homo' and 'Une Larme de Dante.'
