There is very much in the Sonnet to mark that development of French verse in which Du Bellay played so great a part. The inversion of the sentence, a trick which gives a special character to all the later formal drama is prominent: the convention of contrast, the purely classical allusion, are mixed with a spirit that is still spontaneous and even naif. But every word is chosen, and it is especially noteworthy to discover so early that restraint in epithet which is the charm but also the danger of what French style has since become. Of this there are two examples here: the eleventh line and the last, which rhymes with it. To contrast slate with marble would be impossible prose save for the exact adjective "_fine_," which puts you at once into Anjou. The last line, in spite of its exquisite murmur, would be grotesque if the "_air marin_" were meant for the sea-shore. Coming as it does after the suggestions of the Octave it gives you suddenly sea-faring: Ulysses, Jason, his own voyages, the long way to Rome, which he knew; and in the "_douceur Angevine_" you have for a final foil to such wanderings, not only in the meaning of the words, but in their very sound, the hearth and the return. _THE SONNET "HEUREUX QUI COMME ULYSSE"_ _Heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage Ou comme cestuy la qui conquit la Toison Et puis est retourne, plein d'usage et raison, Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son age! Quand revoirai-je, helas, de mon petit village Fumer la cheminee: et en quelle saison Revoirai-je le clos de ma pauvre maison, Qui m'est une province, et beaucoup d'avantage?_ _Plus me plaist le sejour qu'ont basty mes aieux Que des palais Romains le front audacieux: Plus que le mabre dur me plaist l'ardoise fine, Plus mon Loyre gaulois que le Tybre Latin, Plus mon petit Lyre que le Mont Palatin, Et plus que l'air marin la doulceur Angevine._ THE WINNOWER'S HYMN TO THE WINDS. This delicate air of summer, this reminiscence and comfort for men who no longer see the Eure or the Bievre or any of their northern rivers, this very mirror of Du Bellay's own exiled mind--was written for an "exercise." It is a translation--a translation from the Latin of a forgotten Venetian scholar. When a man finds in reading such a startling truth, it convinces him that letters have a power of their own and are greater of themselves than the things which inspired them: for when, to show his skill in rendering Latin into French verse, Du Bellay had written this down, he created and fixed for everybody who was to read him from then onwards the permanent picture of a field by the side of a small, full river, with a band of trees far off, and, above, the poplar leaves that are never still. It runs to a kind of happy croon, and has for a few moments restored very many who have read it to their own place; and Corot should have painted it.