COLINETTE.
[FOR A SKETCH BY MR. G. LESLIE, A.R.A.]
FRANCE your country, as we know; Room enough for guessing yet, What lips now or long ago, Kissed and named you - Colinette. In what fields from sea to sea, By what stream your home was set, Loire or Seine was glad of thee, Marne or Rhone, O Colinette?
Did you stand with 'maidens ten, Fairer maids were never seen,' When the young king and his men Passed among the orchards green? Nay, old ballads have a note Mournful, we would fain forget; No such sad old air should float Round your young brows, Colinette.
Say, did Ronsard sing to you, Shepherdess, to lull his pain, When the court went wandering through Rose pleasances of Touraine? Ronsard and his famous Rose Long are dust the breezes fret; You, within the garden close, You are blooming, Colinette.
Have I seen you proud and gay, With a patched and perfumed beau, Dancing through the summer day, Misty summer of Watteau? Nay, so sweet a maid as you Never walked a minuet With the splendid courtly crew; Nay, forgive me, Colinette.
Not from Greuze's canvasses Do you cast a glance, a smile; You are not as one of these, Yours is beauty without guile. Round your maiden brows and hair Maidenhood and Childhood met Crown and kiss you, sweet and fair, New art's blossom, Colinette.
A SUNSET OF WATTEAU.
LUI.
THE silk sail fills, the soft winds wake, Arise and tempt the seas; Our ocean is the Palace lake, Our waves the ripples that we make Among the mirrored trees.
ELLE.
Nay, sweet the shore, and sweet the song, And dear the languid dream; The music mingled all day long With paces of the dancing throng, And murmur of the stream.
An hour ago, an hour ago, We rested in the shade; And now, why should we seek to know What way the wilful waters flow? There is no fairer glade.
LUI.
Nay, pleasure flits, and we must sail, And seek him everywhere; Perchance in sunset's golden pale He listens to the nightingale, Amid the perfumed air.
Come, he has fled; you are not you, And I no more am I; Delight is changeful as the hue Of heaven, that is no longer blue In yonder sunset sky.
ELLE.
Nay, if we seek we shall not find, If we knock none openeth; Nay, see, the sunset fades behind The mountains, and the cold night wind Blows from the house of Death.
A NATIVITY OF SANDRO BOTTICELLI.
'WROUGHT in the troublous times of Italy By Sandro Botticelli,' when for fear Of that last judgment, and last day drawn near To end all labour and all revelry, He worked and prayed in silence; this is she That by the holy cradle sees the bier, And in spice gifts the hyssop on the spear, And out of Bethlehem, Gethsemane.
Between the gold sky and the green o'er head, The twelve great shining angels, garlanded, Marvel upon this face, wherein combine The mother's love that shone on all of us, And maiden rapture that makesluminous The brows of Margaret and Catherine.