A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields/To My Children (Jules Lefèvre-Deumier)
My dear little children, while softly you sleep,
By your bedside for you a present I keep,
These leaflets in print, where, hid like a bee
In the heart of a flower, my soul you may see
Lapped in the shadow delightful of rhyme,—
To you my first born, grave and lovely Maxime,
Who at six with the wisdom of seven years are blest,
Who con o'er Blue-Beard, Tom-Thumb, and the rest,
But can't grasp very clearly all that you read;
And to you, Eusebius, an angel indeed,
An angel that totters about as in fetters,
Eighteen months old, not great in belles-lettres
At present, but who, I'm sure, in the skies
Where seraphs must miss your voice and your eyes,
Could read like a doctor, and speak by the day,
But who've lost all your skill it seems on the way;
To you, my darlings both, this present I bring,
Swathed with my love is the poor offering.
Not a gift, after all, for which much may be said,
For this 'forget-me-not,' upon us weighs often like lead:
Still,—when you're grown, 'twould be good to discover
If these pages in print are worth their fair cover,
If my couplets too numerous be compact or ill-knitted,
If my style to my theme and my matter be fitted.
It's a long work, but, dears, in all labour there's profit,
And children devoted will make the best of it.
Yes, sometimes you will read this cluster of lays,
This silent consoler of my oft bitter days,
And you will read twice o'er, bits here and there,
And all my aspirations, I foresee, you'll share;
The parts wherein I bless the mobile arches
Of woods, resounding with great organ marches
When winds stir up their music in the leaves,
May strike your eye; or where I sing, the sheaves,
Or bees that court the wild flowers, or the calm
Of sacred solitude and the silent psalm
Of nature, where my holidays I kept:
Scenes where I've smiled, and oftener, oftener wept.
And you will say, like children kind and good,
'These lines, for the time, are not very rude;
The style's rather stiff, out-of-fashion, one may say,
But really such thoughts are not met every day.'
When your mother, well versed in legend and tale,
Recounts some adventure, and you listen all pale,
How once in the Black Forest ogres roared grim,
And roasted their prey in the twilight dim,
Whole flocks at a time—with a wolf—on the spit!
If allusion by chance be made to my wit,
Or my verses neglected, she will reply,
With some little pride in her bearing and eye,—
'Be sure, my dear children, whate'er critics may say,
Such verses are not very common to-day.
What deep philosophy! Ah, what a grace!
Touches how tender and bold interlace!
If this be old, so much worse for our youth,
What, what have they done that's better, forsooth?
"The Whaler," "The Circles," "Josaphat," and "The Night,"
Who loves not these pieces is a booby outright.
One eve—I remember that evening well,
Still haunts me his voice distinct as a bell,—
He recited "The End of the World"—to a set
Of friends dearly loved, among whom was Soumet;
And he took the word up at last—"On my faith,
If the world last, but as long as its death
Is certain to live—one may well be at ease."
And do you wonder that poems like these
Are not read now-a-days? Ah, think, my dear boys,
The world is distracted with tumult and noise,
And they never were read—no, never, my dears,
Though prompt to raise smiles and melt into tears.
Ah! If your father had deigned to desire
The bubble called fame, with his heart and his lyre
How easy for him 'twere'—my children, I hope
You'll give all this nonsense freedom and scope,
And errors respect that your mother console,
For love is their source, and love is their goal.
This matter affects me, my future is here,
To miss her sweet praise I feel such a fear
That now I enjoy it, or fain would at least,
As birds hail before-hand, the first streak in the east.
For deaf is the tomb by its nature; a word
Said above it may beneath not be heard.
No matter. Here with you my shade will remain,
And let me arrange the details in my brain;
The paradise my Muse builds is near you, my dears,
By the hearth that beholds my pleasures and tears.
When you make up your nests where I'd made mine,
Have the same leisure, and worship the Nine,
I say not you must my book often read,
No such devotion or penance I need.
But at Val, sometimes in the eve, when the sky
Looks, sprinkled with stars, like a pall hung on high,
When silver clouds swell out the gold on their sails,
And sweep through a sea where the crescent prevails:
When grows in the dim wood dark and darker the day,
And the nightingale wakes with her soul-thrilling lay,
When the heads of the flowers bend languishing down
As to sleep, and like folds of marble brown
Winds the fog round the trunks of the aged trees,
In a drapery dense, unstirred by the breeze,
When glowworms tremble in the blades of the grass,
Like sapphires from heaven dropt by angels that pass;
And fly hither and thither the wandering lights
Around the marshes, and far over the heights,
Say then, my friends, ‘Here's the hour of his choice!
In the woods our dear father now used to rejoice,
Roaming about in the darkness at will,
Intent on his thought, pursuing it still,
Or on the watch silent—like a hunter grim,
For it to start forth from its twilight dim.
His traces everywhere have now disappeared,
The branch once so green is blasted and seared,
But it behoves us now, at his favourite time
To think of him tenderly, or to read his rhyme.'
Speak often of me: my shade, night and day,
Will hover around you, though it darken your way;
Love verses that spring from kind hearts like your own,
They are echoes from heaven, stray beams from the throne;
While I slumber in earth, whisper gently of me—
'His tune was old Virgil's, though far lower his key.
If the world never thought so, the reason is clear—
Impatient, it never deigned even to hear;
But the less it talks of him, the more we should raise
Around his dear name an incense of praise.
As his loved ones, we two should treasure his story,
As his loved ones, we two should give him his glory;
For once we are dead—who, who will awake him,
Bard of a day?—the dark night will o'ertake him.'
This, this would be, dear ones, my funeral oration,
I shall want, I assure you, no other ovation.
I count upon you, and for this reason, my friends,
I give you my book. Keep, keep till life ends
This Souvenir. At your breath the verses that sleep
Herein, into vigour and beauty shall leap,
As leap into loveliness sudden the flowers
At zephyr's sweet breath, to bloom through the hours.
I seek not a fleeting renown or a name,
Your memory, my children—there, there is my fame.