![]() ![]() All the swains in a wide region about Roquefort admired Françonette, and the girl knew it, and it made her beauty shine the brighter. Such a miracle the poet says may be wrought in any rank or race, to the envy of maidens and the despair of men. Brown locks and curly decked her head, Her lips were as the cherry red, Whiter than snow her teeth, her feet How softly molded, small and fleet! How light her limbs ! Ah, welladay ! What if the whole at once I say ? Hers was the very head ideal Grafted on woman of this earth, most fair and real! Never you fancy, gentles, howe'er it seem to you, This was a soft and pensive creature, Lily-fair in every feature, With tender eyes and languishing, half-shut and heaven blue With light and slender shape in languor ever swaying, Like a weeping willow with a limpid fountain playing Not so, my masters Françonette Had vivid, flashing orbs, like the stars in heaver set And the laughing cheeks were round, whereon a lover might Gather in handfuls roses bright. But there “s room for all, their coming will not cumber For the fields will be their iun, and the little hillocks green The couches of their slumber.Īmong them came Françonette, the belle of the country - side, concerning whom we are besought to allow the poet just two words. ![]() O’erflowing were the spaces all Down cliff, up dale, from every home In Montagnac or Saint Colombe, Still they come, Too many far to number More and more, more and more, while flames the sunshine o’er. 'T was the very finest fete that eyes had ever seen 'n the shadow of the vast and leafy parasol Where aye the country-folk convene. So then it came to pass In a hamlet nestling underneath a castled height, On the day of Roquefort fête, while Sunday bells outrang, The jocund youth danced all together, And, to a fife, the praises sang Of Saint James and the August weather, - That bounteous month which year by year, Through dew-fall of the even clear And fire of tropic noons, doth bring Both grapes and figs to ripening. those days, and every shepherd lass At the bare name of Huguenot would shiver with affright Amid their loves and laughter. ![]() Blaise de Montluc, Marshal of France, after putting men, women, and children of the Huguenots, indiscriminately to the sword, had shut himself up in the Château d’Estillac, and was understood to be devoting himself to religious exercises “taking the sacrament while dripping with fraternal blood,” says the poet. In a preface dated July 4, 1840, Jasmin dedicated the poem of Françonette to the city of Toulouse, thereby expressing his gratitude for a banquet given him in 1836 by the leading citizens of that place, at which the president of the day had given the toast, “Jasmin, the adopted son of Toulouse.” The action of the poem begins during the persecutions of the French Protestants in the sixteenth century. Moreover, the pentameter does not lend itself readily to rhythmic variations and caprices, and so I am fain, though diffidently, still to follow the movement of the original. The iambic pentameter, our natural narrative metre, is one foot shorter, and the Gascon of Jasmin is not easily condensed. It is, however, difficult to find a substitute for it. Dorcas, seated on the bench, is spinning Rosina and Phœbe, just within the door, are measuring a bushel of corn William comes from the top of the stage they sing the following trio.I MUST beg leave to remark in passing that I have constantly recurring doubts about the fitness for English verse, especially in earnest and impassioned narrative, of the Alexandrine or iambic hexameter, which forms the basis of all Jasmin’s longer poems. The door of the cottage is open, a lamp burning just within. The day begins to break a few stars still appear after the trio, the sun is seen to rise. ![]() This progressive motion should be made imperceptibly, but its effect should be visible through the two acts. In the first act the sky clears by degrees, the morning vapour disperses, the sun rises, and at the end of the act is above the horizon: at the beginning of the second he is past the height, and declines till the end of the day. Scene opens and discovers a rural prospect: on the left side a little hill with trees at the top a spring of water rushes from the side, and falls into a natural bason below: on the right side a cottage, at the door of which is a bench of stone. ![]()
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