Parle donc, ô mon Dieu! ton serviteur fidèle,
Pour écouter ta voix, réunit tons ses sens,
Et trouve les douceurs de la vie éternelle
En ses divins accents.
Parle pour consoler mon âme inquiétée;
Parle pour la conduire à quelque amendement;
Parle, afin que ta gloire ainsi plus exaltée,
Croisse eternellement."
Corneille's occasional verses have the inequality of all his poetry. His compliments are dull and awkward when he has not his heart in what he says. But if that is touched, the fierté cornélienne at once gives them, not the sublimity of Milton's great references to his blindness and his perils, but a stateliness and arrogance that is singularly impressive in its way. Such are the lines Au Roi on the performance of his tragedies, which are spoiled only by the last line; and such also are the famous Stances à la Marquise, in which he bids her remember that old though he be, it is to his love she will owe her celebrity in years to come,—
"Chez cette race nouvelle
Où j'aurai quelque crédit,
Vous ne passerez pas pour belle
Qu'autant que je l'aurai dit.
Pensez-y, belle Marquise;
Quoiqu'un grison fasse effroi,
II vaut bien qu'on le courtise
Quand il est fait comme moi."
A strange phenomenon in the decadence of the deeper poetic spirit, which had animated the sixteenth-century poets down to d'Aubigné and was
