Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, REPOSE OF THE SOUL IN THE WOOD OF L'HAUTIL: ODE TO PISSEFONTAINE, by PAUL FORT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

REPOSE OF THE SOUL IN THE WOOD OF L'HAUTIL: ODE TO PISSEFONTAINE, by                    
First Line: Muses, I dub myself, despite each rival claim, with haughty heraldry
Last Line: Stentorian tread the rhythm of my lay?
Subject(s): Courts & Courtiers; Royal Court Life; Royalty; Kings; Queens


Muses, I dub myself, despite each rival claim, with haughty heraldry, King of
Pissefontaine. -- Count if you choose, but king is not too much, I hold. -- With
lance in rest I charge all the pretenders bold who hie them hither armed though
but with stoups of ale, across the fields and vines my title to assail.

Who more than I to sing this village would desire, lover of mornings clear,
perched high above them all, where twenty lusty cocks, for lack of village
spire, from the roofs, to the countryside the first good-morrow call? Who passes
happy days in the free atmosphere to see it on its rock in equipoise appear, to
count the houses fair that o'er the bushes spring like herds of little goats
buoyantly gambolling?

'Tis I. Is it not I? -- more proofs? you're still in doubt? come, drink, and
suffer me, drinking, to search them out -- who, then, descends superb in
dawning's golden shrine, his graceful calf caressed by tendrils of the vine, his
flowing cloak bedecked with drops of crystal dew, towards the castle of my
choice, this jolly tavern blue, and, glass in hand, without, fearing no whit the
prod of horns, to sleeping husbands doth sing this gay aubade (for a brief
instant brushed by kisses circumspect since for eye alone the right of
jambage do I exact), then in a rocking-chair plunged like a goodly king --
this throne a Briton left to pay his reckoning -- with rapture o'er the square
the slender limes doth view, quivering in the wind as they are wont to do, while
in the hollow roads my subject marmots go far as Triel to roll the casks of
picolo -- letting my wits, still sharp, suit to the cadence gay of their
stentorian tread the rhythm of my lay?





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