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Home  »  Complete Poetical Works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  »  II. Unacknowledged and Uncollected Translations. To the Forest of Gastine

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893.

Appendix

II. Unacknowledged and Uncollected Translations. To the Forest of Gastine

By Pierre de Ronsard

STRETCHED in thy shadows I rehearse,

Gastine, thy solitudes,

Even as the Grecians in their verse

The Erymanthian woods.

For I, alas! cannot conceal

From any future race

The pleasure, the delight, I feel

In thy green dwelling-place.

Thou who beneath thy sheltering bowers

Dost make me visions see;

Thou who dost cause that at all hours

The Muses answer me;

Thou who from each importunate care

Dost free me with a look,

When lost I roam I know not where

Conversing with a book!

Forever may thy thickets hold

The amorous brigade

Of Satyrs and of Sylvans bold,

That make the Nymphs afraid;

In thee the Muses evermore

Their habitation claim,

And never may thy woods deplore

The sacrilegious flame.