A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields/Romance (Chateaubriand)
ROMANCE.
Sweet, oh sweet is thy memory
My birth-place hid in greenery!
My sister, how the days seemed fair
When we
First breathed of France the liberal air
Down there!
Dost thou like me remember clear
How oft while we the hearth stood near,
Our mother clasped us, nothing loth,
My dear?
And we her hair with answering troth
Kissed both?
Dost thou remember, proud and hoar,
The chateau by the river Dore,
And fairer still, the turret high
Of More,
Whence bells proclaimed to earth and sky,
Day nigh?
Dost thou remember too the lake
Whose calm the swallows skimmed to break
While reeds by zephyrs wooed and won
Would shake,
And sank, his course of glory done,
The sun?
Oh, who shall give me Helen back?
The great oak and the mountain track;—
Though sorrow hang the passing day
In black,
One landscape shall rich hues array
For aye!