A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields/The Voulzie (Hégésippe Moreau)
THE VOULZIE.
Is there a river with more charms for a poet
Than the Voulzie? I defy thee to show it.
Is the Voulzie a stream with great islands? No,
Its charm lies in its murmur—low, very low.
The smallest of brooks, it knows hardly to flow.
A giant athirst at a breath might drink all
The Voulzie entire, from its source to its fall,
The dwarf Oberon, who disports with its shells,
Across it might leap without wetting his bells;
But the Voulzie I love, and dearly I love,
As pent in its flowers, with its dark woods above,
With blackberries teeming, it hums monotone,
For there on its banks I have wandered alone
As a child. I' the shade of its forests profound
I have given a language oft, oft to its sound;
A schoolboy, poor, dreaming, whom men might call wild,
But happy, so happy, and so undefiled.
When my bread to the birds in pieces I threw,
And pleased in wild circles around me they flew,
The wave murmured, 'Hope, in days evil again,
God this bread shall give back'—the promise was vain.
Mine Egeria it was,—my loved oracle,
At all my sorrows it said, 'Hope, child, 'tis well.
Hope, hope thou and sing, and know never a fear,
Thy mother and Camille shall ever be near.'
From the depths of my soul rang echoes out long,
Responsive and faithful to that siren song.
Chimeras! Where are they? Asleep, ah! asleep
By the church where we prayed, in graves dark and deep.
The sole friends that greet me when here I return
Are corn-flowers and roses with dews in their urn,
All the rest, or nearly all, have left me and gone:
I long also to sleep, but still journey on.
The thorns on the road mock my rags as I pass,
It seems bordered with tombs of loved ones, alas!
I played for a time on my lyre; then I fled.
No echoes. 'Twas dreadful to sing to the dead.
Delirious, I dashed into fragments the lyre
And flung them afar. Once could soothe and inspire
Those bits sacred of ivory; once they were kept
And valued as treasures. . . . I thought and I wept.
Still, O my Voulzie, I forgive thee, and sad
In my own life, would have thy life ever glad.
To love me I need so a kind confidant,
To speak gently to me some friend I so want;
To be cheated with hope so eager I pant,
That ere my eyes close to the light of the day,
Ere my vexed spirit from the earth glides away,
I fain would revisit—God grant that I may!—
Thy bank as a pilgrim that visits a shrine.
How glad I should look on the green bushes in line,
So dear to my childhood; or sleep to the voice
Of the wild whistling reeds; or haply rejoice
Over the future reinvested with hues
From the rainbow's bright arch, and fresh with the dews
Of the morn—a vision of beauty serene,
Thou paintest, while prattling green borders between,
Deceitful and fair as of frost-work a scene.