BALLAD OF OLD TIME LADIES. BY FRANÇOIS VILLON.
Reading edition
This ballad, of which we give Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s translation, was written by Villon in 1450. There are many translations of the poems of that beggar, poet, thief—that first lucid poet of France. Andrew Lang has interpreted him in one way, John Payne in another. The following translation is, perhaps, the happiest of this particular poem, though the ballad cannot but lose some of its spirit in an English rendering.
Tell me, now, in what hidden way is Lady Flora the lovely Roman? Where’s Hipparchia, and where is Thais— Neither of them the fairer woman? Where is Echo, beheld of no man, Only heard on river and mere— She whose beauty was more than human? But where are the snows of yesteryear?
Where’s Heloise, the learned nun, For whose sake Abeillard, I ween, Lost manhood and put priesthood on? (From love he won such dule and teen!) And where, I pray you, is the Queen Who willed that Buridan should steer, Sewed in a sack’s mouth, down the Seine? But where are the snows of yesteryear?
White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies With a voice like any mermaiden— Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice, And Ermengarde, the lady of the Maine— And that good Joan, whom Englishmen At Rouen doomed, and burned her there— Mother of God, where are they, then? But where are the snows of yesteryear?
Nay, never ask this week, fair lord, Where they are gone, nor yet this year, Except with this for an overword— But where are the snows of yesteryear?