A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields/Béranger to the Academy (Arsène Houssaye)
BÉRANGER TO THE ACADEMY.
No, no, O my friends, obtain no honours for me,
For your Institute I feel I never was born,
There are poets far better, that would grace it, you see,
I—I am no scholar, but a fiddler low-born.
I know but to live, to love, to sing like the brook;
I'll tell you my want, I'd like to live through this season
And read at my leisure; dear Lisette is my book,
And my house my Institute—pray deem this not treason.
What—what should I do, 'mid your discussion and strife?
I should have to write out, first of all, a discourse;
Nought ever saving songs have I writ in my life,
And these welled without effort, nor was learning their source.
Here, gentlemen, the Muse is familiar and gay,
Provided there be rhyme, none asks here for reason,
Here Courier has commented on Molière by the day,
My house is my Institute—oh, deem it not treason.
Ivy-covered, you see it, 'tis decrepit with age,
But its swallows are punctual at the advent of spring.
What! Ye deem me, birds vagrant, confined to my cage?
I skim through past ages, and the world, on my wing!
After Noah, well! Aspasia the star-crowned I met,
And Socrates, I tried to console him in prison,
And Homer—dance, O my muse, and sing to the set!
Lest my Lares accuse me too justly of treason
Yesterday, while I stood on the step of my door,
Sudden illumined was the East—red, red, to the pole!
And what heard I afar? The wind of evening bore
To my ears, the loved airs of Jena and Arcole.
They've left, the young stoics—won't they take me for bard?
God bless them—the peasants, and their flag and its blazon!
Eighty-nine, thy proud memory they know how to guard,
I blessed them while passing—let fools call it treason.
Your laurel too darkly on a sad forehead lowers,
The laurels resemble cypress-leaves in their gloom;
For me, I would die amid fragrance and flowers,
Strew roses, fresh roses on my bier and my tomb!
Bends my head: 'tis from age, like a low whistling reed
It pines for free air and the welkin with reason.
Immortal!—I?—Chut! Nonsense! Death went by indeed,
Pray point out my house—'twill be friendship, not treason.