n did return.

All the poem is wine. It catches its rhymes and weaves them in and in,
and moves rapid and careless in a fugue, like the march from Asia when
the Panthers went before and drew the car. The internal rhythm and pulse
is the clapping of hands in barns at evening and the peasants' feet
dancing freely on the beaten earth. It is a very good song; it remembers
the treading of the grapes and is refreshed by the mists that rise at
evening when the labour is done.

_THE VINEYARD SONG._

_Changeons propos, c'est trop chante d'amours,
Ce sont clamours, chantons de la Serpette,
Tous vignerons ont a elle recours,
C'est leur secours pour tailler la vignette.
O serpilette, o la serpilonnette,
La vignolette est par toy mise sus,
Dont les bons vins, tous les ans, sont yssus!_

_Le dieu Vulcain, forgeron des haults dieux,
Forgea aux cieulx la serpe bien taillante,
De fin acier, trempe en bon vin vieulx,
Pour tailler mieulx et estre plus vaillante.
Bacchus le vante et dit qu'elle est seante
Et convenante a Noe le bonshom
Pour en tailler la vigne en la saison._

_Bacchus alors chappeau de treille avoit,
Et arrivoit pour benistre la vigne;
Avec flascons Silenus le suivoit,
Lequel beuvoit aussi droict qu'une ligne;
Puis il trepigne, et se faict une bigne;
Comme une guigne estoit rouge son nez.
Beaucoup de gens de sa race sont nez._

RONSARD.

If it be true that words create for themselves a special atmosphere, and
that their mere sound calls up vague outer things beyond their strict
meaning, so it is true that the names of the great poets by their mere
sound, by something more than the recollection of their work, produce an
atmosphere corresponding to the quality of each; and the name of Ronsard
throws about itself like an aureole the characters of fecundity, of
leadership, and of fame.

A group of men to which allusion will be made in connection with Du
Bellay set out with a programme, developed a determined school, and
fixed the literary renaissance of France at its highest point. They
steeped themselves in antiquity, and they put to the greatest value it
has ever received the name of poet; they demanded that the poet should
be a kind of king, or seer. Half seriously, half as a product of mere
scholarship, the pagan conception of the muse and of inspiration f