r nature (whom
I call harsh) since... etc.

SONNETS FOR HELENE.

Sonnet XLII, line 1. _Ocieuse_="otiosa," langorous.

Line 5. _Ennuy_, in the sixteenth century meant something fuller than,
and somewhat different from the word "ennui" to-day. It was a weariness
which had in it some permanent chagrin.

Line 8. _Pipe_, "cajoles": a word which (now that it is unusual) mars
the effect of its meaning by its insignificant sound.

Lines 8 and 9. Note _ioye_, _vraye_, a feminine "e" following another
vowel is, since Malherbe, forbidden in the interior of a verse, unless
elided.

Line 11. _Ton mort_, "your ghost."

Sonnet XLIII, line 6. _Desia_=deja.

Line 7. _De mon nom._ I have printed the line thus because Ronsard
himself wished it so, and so corrected it with his own hand. But the
original form is far finer "_Au bruit de Ronsard._"

DU BELLAY.

THE SONNET "HEUREUX QUI COMME ULYSSE."

Line 3. _Usage._ A most powerful word in this slightly archaic sense:
the experience of long travel: familiar knowledge of things seen.

Line 12. _Loire._ This word has puzzled more than one editor. There are
two rivers: the great river Loire, which is feminine, and the little
Loir, which is masculine. Here Du Bellay spells the name of the great
river, but puts it in the masculine gender. It has been imagined that he
was talking of the smaller river. But he was not. The Loire alone has
any connection with Lire or with his life, and as for the gender,
strained as the interpretation may seem, I believe that Du Bellay
deliberately used it in the parallel with the Tiber and the idea of the
"Fleuve Paternel," to which he alludes so often elsewhere.

Line 13. _Lyre._ The modern Lire, his birthplace, on the left bank of
the Loire, just opposite Ancenis. As you go along the Poitiers road to
the bridge it stands up on your right, just before the river.

THE DOG.

Line 1. _Motte_=a turf.

Line 40. _Damoiselet._ Still used more or less in its old sense of a
young man _armed_: not merely a young page or a cadet of the
gentry,="like a little sentry."

Line 43. _Anvie_=(of course) "envie."

THE CAT.

Line 22. _Rouet_=spinning-wheel.

Line 26. _Panne_=the Italian _Panno_--cloth.

Line 27. _Troigne_=the mouth and face of an animal, the muzzle.

Line 32. _Chere_=(originally) "head" and one of the few old French words
derived from Greek, but the first signification has long been lost. Here
the phrase