LES AMOURS DE CASSANDRE: XXXVI AT THE SORROW I’M MADE TO FEEL ...
Pierre de Ronsardtr. A.S.Kline
Pour la douleur, qu'amour veult que je sente,
Ainsi que moy, Phebus, tu lamentoys,
Quand amoureux, loing du ciel tu chantoys
Pres d'Ilion sus les rives de Xanthe.

Pinçant en vain ta lyre blandissante,
Et fleurs, et flots, mal sain, tu echantoys,
Non la beaulté qu'en l'ame tu sentoys
Dans le plus doulx d'une playe esgrissante.

Là de ton teint se pallissoyent les fleurs,
Et l'eau croissant' du dégout de tes pleurs,
Parloit tes criz, dont elle roulloyt pleine:

Pour mesme nom, les fleurettes du Loyr,
Pres de Vandosme, et daignent me douloyr,
Et l'eau se plaindre aux souspirs de ma peine.
 At the sorrow I’m made to feel by Love,
Phoebus you used to lament, like me,
When you sang, in exile, passionately,
Near Ilium on the banks of Xanthus.

You bewitched the rivers, flowers and woods,
With your lyre, in vain but beguilingly,
Yet not what your soul felt, the beauty
That dealt what was festering in your blood.

There you turned the flowers pale, with your hue,
There the streams filled with tears for you,
There you lived in hope, but all in vain.

Love grieves me for that same name, this hour,
Near Vendôme, on the banks of Loir,
Like a Phoenix born again from my pain.
Note: Cassandra of Troy refused Phoebus Apollo’s love.
Ilium is Troy, and the Xanthus is one of its two rivers, the Scamander.
The Loir is a tributary of the larger Loire, in the Vendômois.
The Phoenix was the mythical bird that rose again from the ashes of its own immolation.
Trans. Copyright © A.S.Kline 2004 







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