Thus one sees, when the fine months return,
our ladies of Blois or Orleans, or Tours, or Amboise,
walking along the banks where Loire sings
with her breaking wavelets; on the green banks,
pacing two by two, their breasts displayed,
their neckwear loosened, they tread the
enamelled Spring grass as they follow the river.
Ainsy qu'on voit au retour des beaux moys
Se promener ou nos Dames de Blois
Ou d'Orléans, ou de Tours, ou d'Amboise,
Dessus la grève ou Loire se degoise
A flot rompu; elles sur le bord vert
Font deux à deux au tétin decouvert,
Au collet lasche, et joignant la rivière
Foulent l'émail de l'herbe printanière.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Sunday, September 15, 2024
A Spring Promenade
Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), "Le Satyre, à I. Huraut Blesien, Seigneur de la Pitardiere," lines 31-38 (tr. D.B. Wyndham Lewis):