Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/185

Gayarr6 597 as well as the most pathetic of the Louisiana poets. A lifelong invalid, he addressed to his father and mother a tender lament from which a few lines should be quoted as an illustration of the elegiac verse in which his state has done perhaps its finest work ; Encore un dernier cnant, et ma lyre 6ph^m6re S'echappe de mes mains, et s'^teint en ce jour, Mais que ces sons mourants, 6 mon phre, ma m^re, Soient exhales pour vous, objets de mon amour. De cet hymne d'adieu si la note plaintive S'envole tristement pour ne plus revenir, Vous ne I'oublirez pas : votre oreille attentive L'empreindra pour jamais dans votre souvenir. Dr. Mercier and Charles Testut, the novelists, both turned their hands to poetry. Mercier's Rose de Smyrne and Erato were printed in Paris in 1842: the first is an Oriental tale; the second a collection of pleasant pieces in praise of love and Louisiana. The merest mention can be made here of Barde, Guirot, Calogne, and 'of Madame Emilie Evershed, the only poetess produced by French Louisiana. The English-speaking United States knows Louisiana largely through the graceful and charming, though not all equally ac- curate, stories and essays of G. W. Cable, ^ Kate Chopin, " and Grace Elizabeth King. Louisianians themselves, and indeed these writers, are under a particular and special indebtedness to a man whose name has often been mentioned in this chapter — Charles Etienne Arthur Gayarre ( 1 805-95) ■ That Louisiana, says Miss King, lives at all in that best of living worlds, the world of history, ro- mance, and poetry, she owes to him. ... As a youth, he conse- crated his first ambitions to her; through manhood, he devoted his pen to her ; old, suffering, bereft by misfortune of his ancestral heri- tage, and the fruit of his prime's vigour and industry, he yet stood ever her courageous knight. ... He held her archives not only in his memory but in his heart, and while he lived, none dared make public aught about her history except with his vigilant form in the line of vision. Too great a stress, however, need not be laid upon Gayarre's passionate provincialism. It is enough to say that in his 'See Book III, Chap. vi. 'Ibid.