"Where wide the forest boughs are spread, Where Flora wakes with sylph and fay, Are crowns and garlands of men dead, All golden in the morning gay; Within this ancient garden grey Are clusters such as no mail knows, Where Moor and Soldan bear the sway: _This is King Louis' orchard close_! "These wretched folk wave overhead, With such strange thoughts as none may say; A moment still, then sudden sped, They swing in a ring and waste away. The morning smites them with her ray; They toss with every breeze that blows, They dance where fires of dawning play: _This is King Louis' orchard close_! "All hanged and dead, they've summoned (With Hell to aid, that hears them pray) New legions of an army dread, Now down the blue sky flames the day; The dew dies off; the foul array Of obscene ravens gathers and goes, With wings that flap and beaks that flay: _This is King Louis' orchard close_! ENVOI. "Prince, where leaves murmur of the May, A tree of bitter clusters grows; The bodies of men dead are they! _This is King Louis' orchard close_! Poor Gringoire has no sooner committed himself, than he is made to recognise the terrible king. He pleads that, if he must join the ghastly army of the dead, he ought, at least, to be allowed to finish his supper. This the king grants, and in the end, after Gringoire has won the heart of the heroine, he receives his life and a fair bride with a full dowry. _Gringoire_ is a play very different from M. De Banville's other dramas, and it is not included in the pretty volume of "Comedies" which closes the Lemerre series of his poems. The poet has often declared, with an iteration which has been parodied by M. Richepin, that "comedy is the child of the ode," and that a drama without the "lyric" element is scarcely a drama at all. While comedy retains either the choral ode in its strict form, or its representative in the shape of lyric enthusiasm (_le lyrisme_), comedy is complete and living. _Gringoire_, to our mind, has plenty of lyric enthusiasm; but M. De Banville seems to be of a different opinion. His republished "Comedies" are more remote from experience than _Gringoire_, his characters are ideal creatures, familiar types of the stage, like Scapin and "le beau Leandre," or ethereal persons, or figures of old mythology, like Diana in _Diane au Bois_, and Deidamia in the piece which shows Achilles among women. M. De Banville's dramas have scarcely prose enough in them to suit the modern taste. They are masques for the delicate diversion of an hour, and it is not in the nature of things that they should rival the success of blatant buffooneries. His earliest pieces--_Le Feuilleton d'Aristophane_ (acted at the Odeon, Dec. 26th, 1852), and _Le Cousin du Roi_ (Odeon, April 4th, 1857)--were written in collaboration with Philoxene Boyer, a generous but indiscreet patron of singers.