Ce sauvage ingénu, dans nos murs transporté,
Regrettoit dans son cœur sa douce liberté,
Et son île riante, et ses plaisirs faciles.
Ebloui, mais lassé de l'éclat de nos villes,
Souvent il s'écrioit: "Rendez-moi mes forêts."
Un jour, dans ces jardins où Louis à grands frais,
Des quatre points du monde et un seul lieu rassemble
Ces peuples végétaux surpris de croitre ensemble,
Qui, changeant à la fois de saison et de lieu,
Viennent tous à l'envi rendre hommage à Jussieu.
L'Indien parcouroit leurs tribes réunies,
Quand tout à coup, parmi ces vertes colonies,
Un arbre qu'il connut dès ses plus jeunes ans,
Frappe ses yeux. Soudain, avec des cris perçans
Il s'élance, il l'embrasse, il le baigne de larmes,
Le couvre de baisers. Mille objets pleins de
Ces beaux champs, ce beau ciel qui le virent heureux,
Le fleuve qu'il fendoit de ses bras vigoureux,
La forêt dont ses traits perçoient l'hôte sauvage,
Ces bananiers chargés et de fruits et d'ombrage,
Et le toît paternel, et les bois d'alentour,
Ces bois qui répondoient à ses doux chants d'amour,
Il croit les voir encor, et son âme attendrie,
Du moins pour un instant, retrouva sa patrie.
Haply the stranger views those shades again, He once had lov'd upon another plain. Awhile the welcome sight beguiles his woe, At once the tears of joy and sorrow flow.
Thus far away along the billowy roar,
Seduc'd unweeting from his native shore,
Where, without guilt, without its blushing sense,
Ingenuous Nature loves with innocence,
The simple savage 'neath a colder sky,
In secret wept his wonted liberty;
Wept his gay isle; wept all its easy joys:
And though awhile delighted with our toys,
Society he found all new and rude,
And oft with sighs reclaim'd his native wood.
Till once reclin'd beneath the bloomy bow'r,
Where, all obedient to imperial pow'r,
Nature collects her vegetable stores,
As Jussieu calls them from her utmost shores;
The artless mourner mark'd with wild surprise
A plant familiar to his infant eyes;
The sudden sight inspires his heavy heart,
He runs, he flies, and all untaught in art,
With tears he clasps it to his beating breast,
And ev'ry sense with joy awhile is blest.
Again his home, his happy home he sees,
With all its simple life, its love and ease;
The fair, the flow'ry banks, where oft he lay,
The cloudless skies that shed incessant day;
Again in thought he stems the headlong flood,
Or fells the raging savage of the wood.
With shade and fruit sees rich bananas crown'd,
His father's cot, which bow'ring groves surround,
Groves which once echoed to his songs of love:
Beneath their shades again he seems to rove;
His melting soul with visions fair expands,
And for a moment hails his native lands.
If any fault can be found with this affecting episode, it is that in the French poem both the language and the versification are somewhat too studied and embellished; blemishes from which, in my opinion, the translation is in a great measure free; for there is an ease, simplicity, and freedom, as well in the tone of its diction, as in the construction of its metre, much better suited to the unadorned and artless pathos of the original anecdote, than would be the most choice and happy elegance.
It is with this delightful episode on the love of country and of home, that the second book of the early copies of "Les Jardins, par M. L'Abbé De Lille," is terminated. In the recently augmented editions it is followed by
several pages of additional matter; yet I cannot help thinking that the close as it originally stood, and which is introduced with singular grace and propriety, must, from the pleasing and tender impression which it leaves on the mind, have a preference with all readers of taste.
It suggests, indeed, a train of emotions more dear and universally felt, perhaps, than any other which can agitate the human breast, for
The love of home, plant native of the soul,
Blooms at the line, nor withers near the pole *,
and is, therefore, admirably adapted to close a
* From "Home; a Poem." Second edition, Edinburgh, 1808; a production which, though unequal in its execution, contains many very beautiful passages on a very interesting subject. It opens with the following pleasing lines:
Beloved Clydesdale! Thy green woods are sweet, When Spring and Summer, wreathed with May-flowers, meet : Sweet are thy swelling hills in light array'd,
Thy glens, the haunts of solitude and shade,
Thy streamlets gently murmuring, and the bloom
Showered on their winding banks;
Home ! There are pleasures undebased by art,
Endearments, where deception has no part,
Treasures that fortune is too poor to give:
Elsewhere I life endure; in home I truly live.
principal division of a poem, one of whose most valuable characteristics is the pathos of its moral feeling.
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