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Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses

Chapter 29: “Quand Vous Serez Bien Vieille...”
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About This Book

A collection of verse that shifts between brisk depictions of modern life—motor races and city heat—and intimate lyrical sonnets exploring love, memory, and devotional longing. Classical and medieval references recur alongside pagan pastoral fantasies that imagine escape to woodland Hesperides, while formal experiments include songs, sonnets, ballades, rondeaux and a pantoum. A seasonal sequence maps moods across spring to winter, and a concluding suite treats mortality through elegy and dark humor. The poems balance energetic narrative scenes with reflective, sometimes elegiac meditations on desire, nature, and death.

“Quand Vous Serez Bien Vieille...”

Ronsard.

THOU (being sometime old), by candlelight
Close crouched by the fire, spinning and mumbling o’er
The past, shalt croon my verses, marvelling more
That Ronsard sang thy praise, what time thy bright
First beauty was. Then, hearing thee recite
Such thing, thy drowsy maid, though weary-sore
And nodding off to sleep, shall wake before
My name and thine, with blessings infinite.
I under earth shall be, a soul in vain
Seeking its rest where myrtle shadows play;
Thou by the hearthstone cringe, outworn and blear,                
My love regretting and thy cold disdain.
Live! an thou hear’st me! Wait no other day!
Gather life’s roses ere thy night be near!