Laudator Temporis Acti

Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), To the Woodsman of Gastine, tr. Curtis Hidden Page in Songs and Sonnets of Pierre de Ronsard (Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Company, 1903), pp. 97-99:

Stay, woodsman, stay thy hand awhile, and hark—
It is not trees that thou art laying low!
Dost thou not see the dripping life-blood flow
From Nymphs that lived beneath the rigid bark?
Unholy murderer of our Goddesses,
If for some petty theft a varlet hangs,
What deaths hast thou deserved, what bitter pangs,
What brandings, burnings, tortures, dire distress!

O lofty wood, grove-dwelling birds' retreat,
No more shall stag and doe, with light-foot tread,
Feed in thy shadow, for thy leafy head
No more shall break the sun's midsummer heat.
The loving shepherd on his four-holed flute
Piping the praises of his fair Janette,
His mastiff near, his crook beside him set,
No more shall sing of love, but all be mute.
Silence shall fall where Echo spoke of yore,
And where soft-waving lay uncertain shade,
Coulter and plough shall pass with cutting blade
And frighted Pans and Satyrs come no more.

Farewell, thou ancient forest, Zephyr's toy!
Where first I taught my seven-tongued lyre to sing,
Where first I heard Apollo's arrows ring
Against my heart, and strike it through with joy;
Where first I worshipped fair Calliope
And loved her noble company of nine
Who showered their roses on this brow of mine;
Where with her milk Euterpe nurtured me.

Farewell, ye ancient oaks, ye sacred heads,
With images and flower-gifts worshipped erst,
But now the scorn of passers-by athirst,
Who, parched with heat the gleaming ether sheds,
And robbed of your cool verdure at their need,
Accuse your murderers, and speak them scathe....
Farewell, ye oaks, the valiant patriot's wreath,
Ye trees Jove himself, Dodona's seed.

'T was you, great oaks, that gave their earliest food
To men, ungrateful and degenerate race,
Forgetful of your favors, recreant, base,
And quick to shed their foster-fathers' blood!
Wretched is he who sets his trust upon
The world!—how truly speaks philosophy,
Saying that each thing in the end must die,
Must change its form and take another on.

Fair Tempé's vale shall be in hills uptossed,
And Athos' peak become a level plain;
Old Neptune's fields shall some day wave with grain.
Matter abides forever, form is lost.

Page didn't translate the first 18 lines of the elegy, which are mostly a description of the mythological punishment of Erysichthon. Here is the entire elegy (numbered XXXII), from Ronsard's Oeuvres, tome IV (1592), pp. 145-147:

Quiconque aura premier la main embesongnée
A te couper Forest, d'une dure congnée,
Qu'il puisse s'enferrer de son propre baston,
Et sente en l'estomac la faim d'Erisichthon,
Qui coupa de Cerés le Chesne venerable 5
Et qui gourmand de tout, de tout insatiable,
Les boeufs & les moutons de sa mere esgorgea,
Puis pressé de la faim soy-mesme se mangea:
Ainsi puisse engloutir ses rentes & sa terre,
Et se devore apres par les dents de la guerre. 10

Qu'il puisse pour vanger le sang de nos forests,
Tousjours nouveaux emprunts sur nouveaux interests
Devoir à l'usurier, & qu'en fin il consomme
Tout son bien à payer la principale somme.

Que tousjours sans repos ne face en son cerveau 15
Que tramer pour-neant quelque dessein nouveau,
Porté d'impatience & de fureur diverse,
Et de mauvais conseil que les hommes renverse.

Escoute, Bucheron (arreste un peu le bras)
Ce ne sont pas des bois que tu jettes à bas, 20
Ne vois-tu pas le sang lequel degoute à force
Des Nymphes qui vivoient dessous la dure escorce?
Sacrilege meurdrier, si on pend un voleur
Pour piller un butin de bien peu de valeur,
Combien de feux, de fers, de morts, & de destresses 25
Merites-tu meschant, pour tuer nos Déesses?

Forest haute maison des oiseaux bocagers,
Plus le cerf solitaire et les Chevreuls legers
Ne paistront sous ton ombre, & ta verte criniere
Plus du Soleil d'Esté rompra la lumiere. 30

Plus l'amoureux Pasteur sur un tronq adossé,
Enflant son flageolet à quatre trous persé,
Son mastin à ses pieds, à son flanc la houlette,
Ne dira plus l'ardeur de sa belle Janette:
Tout deviendra muet, Echon sera sans vois: 35
Tu deviendras campagne, & en lieu de tes bois,
Dont l'ombrage incertain lentement se remue,
Tu sentiras le soc, le coutre, & la charrue:
Tu perdras ton silence, & Satyres & Pans,
Et plus le Cerf chez toy ne cachera ses Fans. 40

Adieu vieille Forest, le jouët de Zephyre,
Où premier j'accorday les langues de ma Lyre,
Où premier j'entendi les fleches resonner
D'Apollon, qui me vint tout le coeur estonner:
Où premier admirant la belle Calliope, 45
Je devins amoureux de sa neuvaine trope,
Quand sa main sur le front cent Roses me jetta,
Et de son propre laict Euterpe m'allaita.

Adieu vielle forest, adieu testes sacrées,
De tableaux & de fleurs en tout temps reverées, 50
Maintenant le desdain des passans alterez,
Qui bruslez en l'Esté des rayons etherez,
Sans plus trouver le frais de tes douces verdures,
Accusent vos meurtriers, & leur disent injures.

Adieu Chesnes, couronne aux vaillans citoyens, 55
Arbres de Jupiter, germes Dodonéens,
Qui premiers aux humains donnastes à repaistre,
Peuples vrayment ingrats, qui n'ont sceu recognoistre
Les biens receus de vous, peuples vrayment grossiers,
De massacrer ainsi nos peres nourriciers. 60

Que l'homme est malheureux qui au monde se fie!
O Dieux, que veritable est la Philosophie!
Qui dit que toute chose à la fin perira,
Et qu'en changeant de forme une autre vestira.

De Tempé la vallée un jour sera montagne, 65
Et la cyme d'Athos une large campagne,
Neptune quelquefois de blé sera couvert.
La matière demeure & la forme se perd.

The historical background is this—in 1573 Henri, King of Navarre (later Henri IV of France), to pay his debts, sold some forests, including that part of the forest of Gâtine that surrounded the Ronsard family estate. See Isidore Silver, Three Ronsard Studies (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1978), pp. 137-141, and Susan K. Silver, "'Adieu vieille forest...': Myth, Melancholia, and Ronsard's Family Trees," Neophilologus 86.1 (January 2002) 33-43 (at 33). I haven't seen the following:

• R. Caisso, "La Vente de la forêt de Gastine à l'époque de Ronsard," Humanisme et Renaissance 4 (1937) 274–285
  
• Ute Margarete Saine, "Dreaming the Forest of Gâtine: Ecology and Antiquity in Ronsard," Cincinnati Romance Review 9 (1990) 1-12
  
• Louisa Mackenzie, "'Ce ne sont pas des bois': Poetry, Regionalism, and Loss in the Forest of Ronsard's Gâtine," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32.2 (Spring 2002) 343-374

Of this forest 23 hectares survive today, in two separate tracts, under the designation Etangs de la Gâtine, located in Loir-et-Cher, near the border with Indre-et-Loire.

---

I.D. McFarlane, "Neo-Latin Verse: Some New Discoveries," Modern Language Review 54.1 (January 1959) 22-28 (at 24-28), suggested that a Latin ode by Gervaise Sepin, "In eum quem salices scindentem reperit" ("Against one whom he found cutting down willow trees"), printed in 1553, inspired Ronsard's elegy. So far as I can tell, Sepin's ode hasn't been translated into English, so I've provided the following rough, but I hope accurate and intelligible, prose version:

O enemy of the goddesses whom Old Mother Earth nourishes in her bosom, o cruel tyrant, what is your bloody right hand doing?

[5] Why do you cut, with unceasing blow of your biting axe, not the trunks of trees, but perhaps the tender metamorphosed bodies of Hamadryads?

[9] Alas, perhaps it is a troop of Oreades, or those who have charge of frail flowers. Perhaps a fickle crowd of Diana's Nymphs, fleeing lustful Satyrs, [13] is turned into these trees and bears neither fruit nor seed as it bends over the water to pay the penalty for abandoning its mistress. [17] For I know that Fauns, in company with Satyrs, frequent these cool shades and, next to the slow flow of the stream, make music with pipes and castanets.

[21] Indeed, it may be that Nisa, traveling this way as she sought her nearby country-house, was by a similar unforeseen accident changed into a willow tree by Diana. [25] Are you splitting her body with your axe? You hear the loud crash of the tree: if you're unaware, these are the lethal pangs and groans of a goddess.

[29] Aren't you afraid that a punishment for such a heinous crime is on the verge of befalling you? O do you not fear Dictynna, often raging against her enemies?

[33] So it was that Dryope, unaware, paid the penalty for plucking a leaf, with the gods taking vengeance, as branched and tender bark covered her white limbs. [37] So it was that the Mother of the Gods once upon a time punished Erysichthon with unending hunger, because he had carried his accursed axe into an ancient grove.

[41] O stop this at once and, if you have any sense, withdraw to your house. For I see that deserved vengeance is coming down from Olympus on your head.

Here is the Latin text of Sepin's ode, from McFarlane (p. 25), although I made a few changes: I emended Orcadum in line 9 to Oreadum, felix in line 24 to salix, and rimoso in line 35 to ramoso; I put a colon at the end of line 26; and I numbered every fifth line:

  Quid tu dearum, quas genitrix alit
Antiqua tellus visceribus suis,
O hostis, o atrox tyranne,
Quid tua dextra facit cruenta?

  Cur tu securis continuo secas 5
Mordacis ictu? non equidem arborum,
Si reris, at forsan reuersa
Corpora Hamadryadum tenella?

  Eheu caterva est forsan Oreadum
Aut quæ caducis floribus imperant: 10
Fortasse Nympharum Dianæ
Turba leuis Satyros procaces

  Vitans in istas vertetur arbores,
Nullosque fructus semina nec parit
Undis recumbens ad relictæ 15
Supplicium dominæ luendum.

  Nam sæpe Faunos cum Satyris scio
Istas per umbras degere frigidas,
Lentumque iuxta cursum aquarum
Cum calamis resonare sistris. 20

  Quid? Nisa fulgens hac faciens iter
Fortasse, villam dum petit hic sitam,
Talique, fortuna impetita
Facta felix fuit a Diana.

  Illique ferro corpora dissecas? 25
Audis fragores arboris æditos:
Si nescias, sunt hi dolores
Mortiferae gemitusque Diuæ.

  Nullumque tanti flagitij times
Iamiam affuturum supplicium tibi? 30
O nonne Dictymnam verere
Sæpe suos furiosam in hostis?

  Ignara pœnas sic Dryope luit
Frondis recisæ, vindicibus diis:
Surgente ramoso per artus 35
Candidulos tenuique libro.

  Mater Deorum sic Erisichthona
Confecit olim perpetua fame,
Quod ipse sacratam bipennim
Intulerat nemori vetusto. 40

  Isthæc relinque o protinus, & tuam
Concede iamiam, si sapias, domum:
Nam cerno delabentem Olympo
Promeritum in caput ultionem.

McFarlane (p. 26) saw three similarities between the two poems: "(i) The failure of the woodcutter to realize that the trees are really divinities...(ii) The thought that the wood is a place of solace and peace, more particularly for Fauns and Satyrs ... (iii) The threat that the woodcutter will incur the wrath and the vengeance of the gods and that he may suffer the fate of Erisichthon."

Thanks very much to my friend Eric Thomson for drawing my attention to Ronsard's elegy.

Related posts: The Heavenly Beauty of Earthly Things; Apollo Karneios and the Cornel-Trees; Pitiful Destruction; Enemy of Orchards; Arboricide and Matricide; The Sacrilegious Axe; Arboricide on the Wayne Ranch; The Woods of Bachycraigh; Papadendrion; Papadendrion Again; A Bewilderment of Birds; Ancient Protests Against Deforestation; Illustrations of Erysichthon; Prayer and Sacrifice to Accompany Tree Cutting; A Spirit Protects the Trees; St. Martin and the Pine Tree; The Geismar Oak; Bregalad's Lament; Petition of a Poplar; Cactus Ed and Arboricide; Views from the Center of Highgate Wood; Artaxerxes and Arboricide; When the Last Tree Falls; The Hamadryads of George Lane; Sorbs and Medlars; So Foul a Deed; Like Another Erysichthon; The Fate of Old Trees; Scandalous Misuse of the Globe; The Groves Are Down; Massacre; Executioners; Anagyrasian Spirit; Butchers of Our Poor Trees; Cruel Axes; Odi et Amo; Kentucky Chainsaw Massacre; Hornbeams; Protection of Sacred Groves; Lex Luci Spoletina; Turullius and the Grove of Asclepius; Caesarian Section; Death of a Noble Pine; Two Yew Trees in Chilthorne, Somerset; The Fate of the Shrubbery at Weston; The Trees Are Down; Hornbeams; Sad Ravages in the Woods; Strokes of Havoc; Maltreatment of Trees; Arboricide; An Impious Lumberjack; Erysichthon in Ovid; Erysichthon in Callimachus; Vandalism.

Labels: arboricide