274 



DISCOVERY 



If it pleases me to invoke during my reveries 

 The days of youth, my dreams when I was twenty, 

 I say to my spirit : " Return to the fields, 

 To the big dense woods, to the green prairies. 

 WTiere, as a child, I loved so much to lose my way 

 \\'hen my heart was overflowing with joy and hope." 



^Vhen I have captured again if only for an hour 



Those dreams on the wing, those memories of the fields. 



There rise then from my comforted heart songs 



Full of smiling hope, songs full of sorrowful regret . . . 



Hope, happiness, love, phantoms of the past. 



How quickly you depart before my icy breath !J 



Like Millet, whose rustic scenes, by the by, are 

 sometimes brought to mind by Rose Harel's lines, 

 this poetess was a profound believer in the voices of 

 nature. There are many references in her poems to 

 the mysterious voices which she heard when a chOd 

 among the trees, and in brooks rippling over pebbles 

 and between mossy banks. That they did not always 

 bring happiness to the hearer she was ready to admit, 

 and in one poem, entitled " Conseil," she cries ; 



X'ecoute pas la voix qui chante, 

 Enfant, k la rive des bois, 

 Voix melancholique et touchante 

 Qui prend I'etre entier k la fois. 



listen not. Child, to the Voice 

 \\'hich sings at the edge of the wood, 

 The melancholy and touching voice 

 NMiich at once absorbs one's whole being.] 



Not that the voice spoke falsely, but because the 

 contrast between the poet's vision and the world 

 to which she would have to return was so dishearten- 

 ing. In spite, however, of the disillusionment which 

 Rose Harel so often experienced, she would not for 

 the world have relinquished her power ; she had too 

 true a poet's heart to lose faith because of momentary 

 suffering : 



Ce que me disent le brin d'herbe 

 " Que Dieu ne crea point en vain " 

 Et le chene el I'aspect superbe 

 Qui croit sur le bord du ravin, 

 Nul ne le salt, nul ne s'en doute, 

 Xul ne comprend ce que j'ecoute 

 De leur idiome divin. 



Jeune, j'avais le privilege 



De comprendre dejJi ces voix ; 



Oh ! combien de fois m'attardai-je 



.A. les ecouter dans les bois ! 



Elles me parlaient d'esperances, 



Ces menteuses voix du silence ! . . . 



Et j'y croyais, comme j'y crois. 



Depuis j'ai vers^ bien des larmes, 

 J'ai bien souffert, j'ai bien gemi, 

 Et j'ai toujours seuti leurs charmes, 

 A leur accent, toujours fremi. 

 Qui dans son ame, un jour blessee, 

 Voit la poesie effacee, 

 N'etait poete qu'^ demi. 



[ That which the blade of grass telleth me — 

 The grass " which God created not in vain " — 

 And the oak of proud bearing 

 Which grows on the ravine's edge. 

 No one knoweth, no one suspecteth, 

 No one can guess what I understand 

 Of their divine language. 



Even when young, it was my privilege 



To understand those voices. 



Oh ! how many times I tarried 



To listen to them in the woods ! 



They spoke to me of hope. 



Those deceitful voices of silence ! . . . 



And I believed in them — as still I do. 



Since, many tears have I shed. 



Much have I suffered and many my groans ; 



But I have ever felt their charm 



And at their accent ever trembled. 



He who, one day, with wounded soul. 



Saw poesy effaced 



Was but half a poet.] 



Flairs d'atitomne, which marked a considerable 

 advance on her preceding volume, contains many 

 poems in praise of coimtry life. Some of these are very 

 popular in certain parts of Normandy, country people 

 and their children in the neighbourhood of Lisieux 

 and Pont I'Eveque, for example, knowing them by 

 heart. They are, indeed, just the kind of poems to 

 appeal to the imagination of peasants : simple, 

 naive descriptions of their cottage interiors, with the 

 family sitting around the fireside on winter nights, 

 telling stories, and of the manifold joys of their healthy 

 village life. 



Wanderers into little-known by-paths of French litera- 

 ture would do well not to overlook the life and work 

 of this Normandy poetess. An imeducated peasant 

 woman who could attain to such wonderful facility 

 in literary expression in the face of so many difficulties, 

 who at the age of thirty studied Greek and Roman 

 history, the literature of her own country, and philo- 

 sophy, who astonished everybody by the scholarly 

 knowledge with which she could speak on these sub- 

 jects, and who, at a time when hardly anyone in 

 France spoke of the betterment of woman's position, 

 was a convinced feministe, was certainly no ordinary 

 mortal. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



L'Alouette aiix blcs. (Lisieux, 1864.) Published by private 

 subscription under the auspices of M. Adolphe Bordes. 



Fleurs d'aiitomtin. (Lisieux, 1885.) Edited by Mme. de 

 Besneray. 



New air schemes shortly to be operated include a 

 Londou-Bnissels-Cologne service by the Instone Air Line, 

 a London-Amsterdam-Bremen-Berlin service by Daimler 

 Hire, Ltd., and the Southampton-Cherbourg and Channel 

 Islands service mentioned in last month's Discovery. 



