Comme la vierge, ayant l'ouragan sur l'épaule,
Crachera l'avalanche à la face du drôle!
********Non, rien n'est mort ici. Tout grandit, et s'en vante.
L'Helvétie est sacrée, et la Suisse est vivante;
Ces monts sont des héros et des religieux;
Cette nappe de neige aux plis prodigieux
D'où jaillit, lorsqu'en mai la tiède brise ondoie,
Toute une floraison folle d'air et de joie,
Et d'où sortent des lacs et des flots murmurants,
N'est le linceul de rien, excepté des tyrans.
This glorious poem of the first series finds a glorious echo in the twenty-fifth division of the second; even as the Pyrenean cycle which opened in the first series is brought in the second to fuller completion of equal and corresponsive achievement. It is wonderful, even in this vast world of poetic miracle where nothing is other than wonderful, that Masferrer should be equal to Aymenllot in frank majesty of beauty; that even after Le Parricide a fresh depth of tragic terror should be sounded by Gaïffer-Forge; and that after all he had already written on fatherhood and sonship, on duty and chivalry, on penitence and pride, Victor Hugo should have struck so new and so profound a note as rings in every fine of La Paternité.
But of all echoes and of all responses which reverberate from end to end of these three great sections of song, the very sweetest, and perhaps the very deepest, are those evoked by love of little children, and compassionate reverence for the poor. If but one division were to be left us out of all the second series, and fate or chance, comparatively compassionate in its cruelty, gave us our choice which this one should be, the best judgments might perhaps
