'Mid France's miracles of art,
Rare trophies won from art's own land,
I've lived to see with burning heart
The fog-bred poor triumphant stand,
reproduces very inadequately the charm of the original:
Dans nos palais, ou, pres de la victoire,
Brillaient les arts, doux fruits des beaux climats,
J'ai vu du Nord les peuplades sans gloire,
De leurs manteaux secouer les frimas.
On the whole, however, Mr. Toynbee's work is good; Les Champs, for
example, is very well translated, and so are the two delightful poems
Rosette and Ma Republique; and there is a good deal of spirit in Le
Marquis de Carabas:
Whom have we here in conqueror's role?
Our grand old Marquis, bless his soul!
Whose grand old charger (mark his bone!)
Has borne him back to claim his own.
Note, if you please, the grand old style
In which he nears his grand old pile;
With what an air of grand old state
He waves that blade immaculate!
Hats off, hats off, for my lord to pass,
The grand old Marquis of Carabas!--
though 'that blade immaculate' has hardly got the sting of 'un sabre
innocent'; and in the fourth verse of the same poem, 'Marquise, you'll
have the bed-chamber' does not very clearly convey the sense of the line
'La Marquise a le tabouret.' The best translation in the book is The
Court Suit (L'Habit de Cour), and if Mr. Toynbee will give us some more
work as clever as this we shall be glad to see a second volume from his
pen. Beranger is not nearly well enough known in England, and though it
is always better to read a poet in the original, still translations have
their value as echoes have their music.
A Selection from the Songs of De Beranger in English Verse. By William
Toynbee. (Kegan Paul.)
THE POETRY OF THE PEOPLE
(Pall Mall Gazette, May 13, 1886.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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