Laudator Temporis Acti

D.B. Wyndham Lewis (1891-1969), Ronsard (London: Sheed & Ward, 1944), pp. 79-80:

Deeper and serener is his passion for his countryside, and of all the first poems of his youth none rings more truly than the Ode [IV.5] in which he chooses his sepulchre once and for all on a little green tree-shadowed island in his beloved home-river. Of the twenty-seven stanzas these eight have the most solemn and beautiful cadences:

Antres, et vous fontaines
De ces roches hautaines
Devallans contre bas
    D’un glissant pas,

Et vous, forests et ondes,
Par ces prez vagabondes
Et vous rives et bois,
    Oiez ma voix.

Quand le ciel et mon heure
Jugeront que je meure
Ravi du doux sejour
    Du commun jour,

Je veil, j'enten, j'ordonne
Qu'un sepulche on me donne
Non près des Roys levé
    Ni d'or gravé.

Mais en cette isle verte,
Ou la course entr' ouverte
Du Loir, autour coulant,
    Est accolant,

Là où Braie s'amie,
D'une eau non endormie,
Murmure à l'environ
    De son giron.

Je deffens qu’on ne rompe
Le marbre pour la pompe
Do vouloir mon tumbeau
    Bâtir plus beau,

Mais bien je veil qu'un arbre
M’ombrage au lieu d'un marbre,
Arbre qui soit couvert
    Tousjours de vert.¹

It was not until 1924 that the Green Islet received, if not Ronsard’s tomb, at least a votive tablet à l'antique, affixed to its stoutest tree by the Ronsardians of Vendôme. The waters of the Loir and the Braye wash round it as they did when Ronsard dreamed there, the silence under the poplars is cool, green, and fragrant with the same "thrilling-sweet and rotten, unforgettable, unforgotten" river-smells Rupert Brooke longed for in exile; the reeds grow thick, the weeds and water-lilies float on the glassy tide, the birds still sing. It is a haunted and enchanted spot.

¹ Caverns, and you, fountains,
From the high rocks
Leaping below
With your sliding surge,

And you, forests, and you, waves,
Flowing through these meadows,
And you, banks and woods,
Hear my voice.

When Heaven and my hour
Decree that I must die,
Ravished from the sweet habitation
Of the common day,

I desire, I intend, I order
That my sepulchre be made
Not lifted high near kings,
Nor graved with gold,

But in this green islet,
Where the divided tide
Of Loir, flowing round,
Embraces it,

There, where Braye her beloved
With sleepless waters
Murmurs around
Her bosom.

I forbid them to quarry
Marble for pride,
Desiring to make my tomb
More comely,

But I firmly desire that a tree
Shade me instead of marble,
A tree that shall be always
Vested in green.