Jean Prouvaire’s Song at the Barricade

Do you remember our charming times,When we were both at the age which knows,Of all the pleasures of Paris, noneLike making love in one’s Sunday clo’es;

When all your birthdays, added to mine,A total of forty would not bring,And when, in our humble and cosey roost,All, even the Winter, to us was Spring?

Rare days! then prudish Manuel stalked,Paris feasted each saintsday in;Foy thundered away; and—ah, your waistPricked me well with a truant pin!

Every one ogled you. At Prado’s,Where you and your briefless barrister dined,You were so fair that the roses, I thought,Turned to look at you from behind.

They seemed to whisper: “How handsome she is!What wavy tresses! what sweet perfume!Under her mantle she hides her wings;Her flower of a bonnet is just in bloom!”

I roamed with you, pressing your dainty arm,And the passers thought that Love, in play,Had mated, in unison so sweet,The gallant April with gentle May.

We lived so coseyly, all by ourselves,On love,—that choice forbidden fruit,—And never a word my lips could speakBut your heart already had followed suit.

The Sarbonne was that bucolic placeWhere night till day my passion throve:’Tis thus that an ardent youngster makesThe Student’s Quarter a Realm of Love.

O Place Maubert! O Place Dauphine!Sky-parlor reaching heavenward far,In whose depths, when you drew your stocking on,I saw a twinkling morning-star.

Hard-learned Plato I’ve long forgot:Neither Malebranche nor LamennaisCould teach me such faith in ProvidenceAs the flower which in your bosom lay.

You were my servant and I your slave:O golden attic! O joy, to laceYour corset; to watch you showing, at morn,The ancient mirror your youthful face!

Ah! who indeed could ever forgetThat sky and dawn commingling still;That rìbbony, flowery, gauzy glory,And Love’s sweet nonsense talked at will?

Our garden a pot of tulips was;Your petticoat curtained the window-pane;I took the earthen bowl of my pipeAnd gave you a cup of porcelain.

What huge disasters to make us fun!Your muff afire; your tippet lost;And that cherished portrait of Shakespeare, sold,One hungry evening, at half its cost.

I was a beggar and you were kind:A kiss from your fair round arms I’d steal,While the folio-Dante we gayly spreadWith a hundred chestnuts, our frugal meal.

And oh! when first my favored mouthA kiss to your burning lips had given,You were dishevelled and all aglow;I, pale with rapture, believed in Heaven.

Do you remember our countless joys,Those neckerchiefs rumpled every day?Alas, what sighs from our boding heartsThe infinite skies have borne away!