sir,
With this enchantress--she will call
Our second mother: Frenchmen err,
Who, cent'ries since, proclaimed her fall!
Our mother-tongue--all melody--
While music lives can never die.

Yes! she still lives, her words still ring;
Her children yet her carols sing;
And thousand years may roll away
Before her magic notes decay.

The people love their ancient songs, and will
While yet a people, love and keep them still:
These lays are as their mother; they recall
Fond thoughts of mother, sister, friends, and all
The many little things that please the heart,
The dreams, the hopes, from which we cannot part.
These songs are as sweet waters, where we find
Health in the sparkling wave that nerves the mind.
In ev'ry home, at ev'ry cottage door,
By ev'ry fireside, when our toil is o'er,
These songs are round us--near our cradles sigh,
And to the grave attend us when we die.

Oh, think, cold critics! 'twill be late and long,
Ere time shall sweep away this flood of song!
There are who bid this music sound no more,
And you can hear them, nor defend--deplore!
You, who were born where its first daisies grew,
Have fed upon its honey, sipp'd its dew,

Slept in its arms, and wakened to its kiss,
Danced to its sounds, and warbled to its tone--
You can forsake it in an hour like this!
Yes, weary of its age, renounce--disown--
And blame one minstrel who is true--alone!"{1}

This is but a paraphrase of Jasmin's poem, which, as we have already
said, cannot be verbally translated into any other language. Even the
last editor of Jasmin's poems--Boyer d'Agen--does not translate them
into French poetry, but into French prose. Much of the aroma of poetry
evaporates in converting poetical thoughts from one language into
another.

Jasmin, in one part of his poem, compares the ancient patois to one of
the grand old elms in the Promenade de Gravier, which, having in a storm
had some of its branches torn away, was ordered by the local authorities
to be rooted up. The labourers worked away, but their pick-axes became
unhafted. They could not up-root the tree; they grew tired and forsook
the work. When the summer came, glorious verdure again clothed the
remaining boughs; the birds sang sweetly in the branches, and the
neighbours rejoiced that its roots had been so numerous and the tree had
been so firmly planted.

Jasmin's description of his mother-tongue is most touching. S