AT LA CHAUDEAU

BY XAVIER MARMIER

At La Chaudeau,—­’t is long since then: 
I was young,—­my years twice ten;
All things smiled on the happy boy,
Dreams of love and songs of joy,
Azure of heaven and wave below,
     At La Chaudeau.

At La Chaudeau I come back old: 
My head is gray, my blood is cold;
Seeking along the meadow ooze,
Seeking beside the river Seymouse,
The days of my spring-time of long ago
     At La Chaudeau.

At La Chaudeau nor heart nor brain
Ever grows old with grief and pain;
A sweet remembrance keeps off age;
A tender friendship doth still assuage
The burden of sorrow that one may know
     At La Chaudeau.

At La Chaudeau, had fate decreed
To limit the wandering life I lead,
Peradventure I still, forsooth,
Should have preserved my fresh green youth,
Under the shadows the hill-tops throw
     At La Chaudeau.

At La Chaudeau, live on, my friends,
Happy to be where God intends;
And sometimes, by the evening fire,
Think of him whose sole desire
Is again to sit in the old chateau
     At La Chaudeau.

A QUIET LIFE.

Let him who will, by force or fraud innate,
  Of courtly grandeurs gain the slippery height;
  I, leaving not the home of my delight,
  Far from the world and noise will meditate. 
Then, without pomps or perils of the great,
  I shall behold the day succeed the night;
  Behold the alternate seasons take their flight,
  And in serene repose old age await. 
And so, whenever Death shall come to close
  The happy moments that my days compose,
  I, full of years, shall die, obscure, alone! 
How wretched is the man, with honors crowned,
  Who, having not the one thing needful found,
  Dies, known to all, but to himself unknown.

THE WINE OF JURANCON

BY CHARLES CORAN

Little sweet wine of Jurancon,
  You are dear to my memory still! 
With mine host and his merry song,
 Under the rose-tree I drank my fill.

Twenty years after, passing that way,
  Under the trellis I found again
Mine host, still sitting there au frais,
  And singing still the same refrain.

The Jurancon, so fresh and bold,
  Treats me as one it used to know;
Souvenirs of the days of old
  Already from the bottle flow,

With glass in hand our glances met;
  We pledge, we drink.  How sour it is
Never Argenteuil piquette
  Was to my palate sour as this!

And yet the vintage was good, in sooth;
  The self-same juice, the self-same cask! 
It was you, O gayety of my youth,
  That failed in the autumnal flask!

FRIAR LUBIN