p
ierre de Ronsard (1524 - 1585), French poet and prince of poets (as his own generation in France called him) was born at the Château de la Possonnière in the Province of Vendômois (Department of Loir et Cher) on the 11th of September 1524. Pierre was the youngest son of the family. He was appointed page first to the kings eldest son François, then to his brother, the Duke of Orleans. When Madeleine de France was married to James V of Scotland, Ronsard was attached to the Kings service and spent three years in Great Britain.

On returning to France in 1540 he was again into the service of the Duke of Orleans. His apparently promising diplomatic career was cut short back by an attack of deafness and he devoted himself to study. He then founded with 6 other writers a literary movement, the Pliade. Named poet royal by Charles IX, he wrote a great number of poems on many themes, especially patriotism, love, and death. Ronsard's most ambitious effort was La Franciade (1572), an unfinished epic. He also wrote (1562) two long patriotic poems deploring the Wars of Religion. Besides the Odes, his most famous poems were certainly the Sonnets pour Hélène where the veteran poet demonstrates his power to revivify the stylized patterns of courtly love poetry.

At the end of his life Pierre de Ronsard was staying at the priory of Saint-Cosme at Tours, and he was buried there on Friday, December 24, 1585. (www.jardinsentouraine.com)

Today, Ronsards poetry belongs to our collective memory and verses like "See, Mignonne, hath not the Rose"... still sound very familiar to our ears and bring us back to school.






See, Mignonne, hath not the Rose,
That this morning did unclose
Her purple mantle to the light,
Lost, before the day be dead,
The glory of her raiment red,
Her colour, bright as yours is bright?

Ah, Mignonne, in how few hours,
The petals of her purple flowers
All have faded, fallen, died;
Sad Nature, mother ruinous,
That seest thy fair child perish thus
'Twixt matin song and even tide.

Hear me, my darling, speaking sooth,
Gather the fleet flower of your youth,
Take ye your pleasure at the best;
Be merry ere your beauty flit,
For length of days will tarnish it
Like roses that were loveliest.



When you are very old, at evening
You'll sit and spin beside the fire, and say,
Humming my songs, 'Ah well, ah well-a-day!
When I was young, of me did Ronsard sing.'
None of your maidens that doth hear the thing,
Albeit with her weary task foredone,
But wakens at my name, and calls you one
Blest, to be held in long remembering.

I shall be low beneath the earth, and laid
On sleep, a phantom in the myrtle shade,
While you beside the fire, a grandame grey,
My love, your pride, remember and regret;
Ah, love me, love! we may be happy yet,
And gather roses, while 'tis called to-day.



As in the gardens, all through May, the rose,
Lovely, and young, and fair apparelled
, Makes sunrise jealous of her rosy red,
When dawn upon the dew of dawning glows;
Graces and Loves within her breast repose,
The woods are faint with the sweet odour shed,
Till rains and heavy suns have smitten dead
The languid flower, and the loose leaves unclose,

So this, the perfect beauty of our days,
When earth and heaven were vocal of her praise,
The fates have slain, and her sweet soul reposes;
And tears I bring, and sighs, and on her tomb
Pour milk, and scatter buds of many a bloom,
That dead, as living, she may be with roses.






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