Page:A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields.djvu/388

Rh poetry, and Victor Hugo, 'un Espagnol.' Still he was in some respects in advance of the modern school, for he wanted to dispense with rhyme in poetry,—at which the greatest innovators in French versification stood aghast! The mystical sonnets he composed in the last years of his life (obscure to any one who has not the key) are very beautiful. 'Their obscurity,' says Théophile Gautier, 'is illumined by sudden starts, like an idol constellated with carbuncles and rubies in the dark shadow of a crypt.'

Flytfaglarne. 'Flytfaglarne' means birds of passage in the Swedish language. The poem in fact is Swedish; and its author is the poet Stagnelius. M. X. Marmier has translated it into French prose in his beautiful novel, 'Les Fiancés du Spitzberg,' which we most heartily recommend to all readers. The book has been 'couronné par l'Académie Française,' and is a masterpiece. The only poem of Hayley, Cowper's friend, which still lives, and deserves to live, is very much in the vein of this piece. Perhaps the reader may remember some of Hayley's lines, the echo of which still rings in our ears

L'Enfant Mourant. Besides the beautiful novel of 'Les Fiancés du Spitzberg, M. Marmier has published a 'History of Literature' in Denmark and Sweden, and some fine translations from Goethe, Schiller, and Hoffman, and of the 'Popular Songs of the North.' The piece we give here bears a close affinity to a poem in the 'Dutt Family Album' written by its editor, which we have much pleasure in inserting here, with a French translation by a friend:—

Papa, papa, am I yet dead?'
 * Thus spake the child from slumber waking;

No, dear, we all are round your bed,
 * And see, the glorious day is breaking.'

If I still live, whence comes these here,
 * These lovely figures that surround me?

Behold, on all sides they appear—
 * White robes and wings! What spell hath bound me?

Lo! rainbow tints; lo! golden zones; Afar off, lo! a gleaming portal! And music, hark! what melting tones! They speak of life, of life immortal.