Pierre de Ronsard

Pierre de Ronsard (11 September 1524 – December 1585) was a French poet.

Quotes

• Mignonne, allons voir si la rose
  Qui ce matin avoit desclose
  Sa robe de pourpre au Soleil,
  A point perdu ceste vesprée
  Les plis de sa robe pourprée.
  Et son teint au vostre pareil.
  • Darling, each morning a blooded rose
    Lures the sunlight in, and shows
    Her soft, moist and secret part;
    See now, before you go to bed,
    Her skirts replaced, her darker red:
    A color like your own, sweetheart.
  • "À Cassandre (À Sa Maistresse)", st. 1, Odes (1550); as translated by Robert Mezey in The Kenyon Review, vol. 19, no. 1 (1957), reprinted in The Lovemaker: Poems (1961) with the following alterations: "deeper" for "darker" (l. 5), "A colour much like yours, dear heart." (l. 6)

• Tandis que vostre âge fleuronne
  En sa plus verte nouveauté,
  Cueillez, cueillez vostre jeunesse:
  Comme à ceste fleur la vieillesse
  Fera ternir vostre beauté.
  • Gather the fleet flower of your youth,
      Take ye your pleasure at the best;
    Be merry ere your beauty flit,
    For length of days will tarnish it
      Like roses that were loveliest.
  • "À Cassandre (À Sa Maistresse)", st. 3, Odes (1550); as translated by Andrew Lang, Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), p. 26

• Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,
  Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,
  Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant:
  "Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j'étais belle."
  • When you are very old, at evening, by candelight,
    Sitting near the fire, spooling and spinning the wool,
    You will say, in wonder, as you sing my verses,
    "Ronsard praised me in the days when I was beautiful."
  • "Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle", ll. 1-4, Sonnets pour Hélène (1578); as translated by Geoffrey Brereton, The Penguin Book of French Verse, vol. 2 (1958), p. 74

• Cueillez dès aujourd'hui les roses de la vie.
  • Gather today the roses of life.
  • "Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle", l. 14, Sonnets pour Hélène (1578)

• Je voudrais être le ruban
  qui serre ta belle poitrine;
  Je voudrais être le carcan
  qui orne ta gorge ivoirine.
  • I would be the ribbon
    That binds your lovely breast,
    I would be the necklace
    That adorns your ivory throat.
  • "Ode à sa Maîtresse", st. 5; as translated by D. B. Wyndham Lewis, Ronsard (New York, 1944), p. 101
  • Cp. Joshua Sylvester, The Wood-mans Bear (1620), st. 55; Alfred Tennyson, The Miller's Daughter (1833, 1842)

• Ny trop haut, ny trop bas, c’est le souverain style;
  Tel fut celuy d’Homère, et celuy de Virgile.
  • Not too high, nor too low—is of all styles the best,
    As the epics of Homer and Virgil attest.
  • "A Luy Mesme", Oeuvres choisies, ed. L. Moland (Paris, n.d.), p. 340; as translated by W. F. H. King, Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 1843

External links

• Pierre de Ronsard at French Wikiquote