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SYLVIE:

SOUVENIRS DU VALOIS

TRANSLATED FROM

GERARD DE NERVAL

BY

LUCIE PAGE

Portland, Maine

THOMAS B. MOSHER

1896

       *       *       *       *       *


GERARD DE NERVAL.


   Of all that were thy prisons--ah, untamed,
     Ah, light and sacred soul!--none holds thee now;
   No wall, no bar, no body of flesh, but thou
   Art free and happy in the lands unnamed,
   Within whose gates, on weary wings and maimed,
     Thou still would'st bear that mystic golden bough
     The Sybil doth to singing men allow,
   Yet thy report folk heeded not, but blamed.

   And they would smile and wonder, seeing where
     Thou stood'st, to watch light leaves, or clouds, or wind,
   Dreamily murmuring a ballad air,
     Caught from the Valois peasants, dost thou find
   A new life gladder than the old times were,
     A love more fair than Sylvie, and as kind?

                                             ANDREW LANG.


       *       *       *       *       *


CONTENTS

     SYLVIE ET AURELIE.--ANDREW LANG
     GERARD DE NERVAL

     SYLVIE:

     I    A WASTED NIGHT
     II   ADRIENNE
     III  RESOLVE
     IV   A VOYAGE TO CYTHERA
     V    THE VILLAGE
     VI   OTHYS
     VII  CHAALIS
     VIII THE BALL AT LOISY
     IX   HERMENONVILLE
     X    BIG CURLY-HEAD
     XI   RETURN
     XII  FATHER DODU
     XIII AURELIE
     XIV  THE LAST LEAF

     APPENDIX




_SYLVIE ET AURELIE._

_IN MEMORY OF GERARD DE NERVAL._

     _Two loves there were, and one was born_
     _Between the sunset and the rain;_
     _Her singing voice went through the corn,_
     _Her dance was woven 'neath the thorn,_
     _On grass the fallen blossoms stain;_
     _And suns may set and moons may wane,_
     _But this love comes no more again._

     _There were two loves, and one made white_
     _Thy singing lips and golden hair;_
     _Born of the city's mire and light,_
     _The shame and splendour of the night,_
     _She trapped and fled thee unaware;_
     _Not through the lamplight and the rain_
     _Shalt thou behold this love again._

     _Go forth and seek, by wood and bill,_
     _Thine ancient love of dawn and dew;_
     _There comes no voice from mere or rill,_
     _Her dance is over, fallen still_
     _The ballad burdens that she knew:_
     _And thou must wait for her in vain,_
     _Till years bring back thy youth again._


     _That other love, afield, afar_
     _Fled the light love, with lighter feet._
     _Nay, though thou seek where gravesteads are,_
     _And flit in dreams from star to star,_
     _That dead love thou shalt never meet,_
     _Till through bleak dawn and blowing rain_
     _Thy soul shall find her soul again._

                                        ANDREW LANG.



Gerard DE NERVAL

     Il a toujours cherche dans le monde
     ce que le monde ne pouvait plus lui
     donner.

                          LUDOVIC HALEVY.

     He has been a sick man all his life.
     He was always a seeker after something
     in the world that is there in no
     satisfying measure, or not at all.

                            WALTER PATER.



GERARD DE NERVAL.


I.


Of Gerard de Nerval, whose true name was Gerard Labrunie, it has been
finely said: "His was the most beautiful of all the lost souls of the
French Romance."(*) Born in 1808, he came to his death by suicide one
dark winter night towards the end of January.

The story of this life and its tragic finale was well known at the time
to all men of letters,--Theophile Gautier, Paul de Saint-Victor, Arsene
Houssaye,--friends who never forgot the young poet even after he went
the way that madness lies. For it was insanity,--a nostalgia of the soul
always imminent--that led him into the squalid _Rue de la
Vieille-Lanterne_, in which long forgotten corner of old Paris his dead
body was found one bleak belated dawn. And this was forty years ago.

In later days Maxime du Camp and Ludovic Halevy have retold with great
feeling the history of Gerard, his early triumphs, his love for Jenny
Colon,--the Aurelie of these _Souvenirs du Valois_,--and how at last
life's scurrile play was ended.

(*) See _A Century of French Verse_, translated and edited by
William John Robertson (4to, London, 1895).


II.


One of Mr. Andrew