C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

On Pierre Ronsard’s Book of Love

Translation of Maurice Francis Egan

IN Bourgueil’s pleasaunce many a lover’s hand

Wrote many a name in letters big and bold

On bark of shady tree; beneath the gold

Of Louvre’s ceiling, love by smiles was fanned.

What matters it? Gone all the maddened band!

Four planks of wood their bodies did enfold;

None now disputes their love, or longs to hold

Their dried-up dust,—part of the grassy land.

All dead. Marie, Hélène, Cassandra proud,

Your bodies would be nothing in their shroud,—

Lilies and roses were not made to last,—

If Ronsard, on the yellow Loire or Seine,

Had not upon your brows his garlands cast

Of myrtle and of laurel not in vain.