eux cremus
Que pour tout bon Francais l'empire est a Rome,
Et qu'ayant pour aieux Romulus et Remus
Nous tetterons la louve a jamais--le pauvre homme."

The new Tartufe worships St. Chassepot, who once, it will not be
forgotten, "wrought miracles"; but he has his doubts as to the morality
of explosive bullets. The nymph of modern warfare is addressed as she
hovers above the Geneva Convention,--

"Quoi, nymphe du canon raye,
Tu montres ces pudeurs risibles
Et ce petit air effraye
Devant les balles exploisibles?"

De Banville was for long almost alone among poets in his freedom from
_Weltschmerz_, from regret and desire for worlds lost or impossible. In
the later and stupider corruption of the Empire, sadness and anger began
to vex even his careless muse. She had piped in her time to much wild
dancing, but could not sing to a waltz of mushroom speculators and
decorated capitalists. "Le Sang de la Coupe" contains a very powerful
poem, "The Curse of Venus," pronounced on Paris, the city of pleasure,
which has become the city of greed. This verse is appropriate to our own
commercial enterprise:

"Vends les bois ou dormaient Viviane et Merlin!
L'Aigle de mont n'est fait que pour ta gibeciere;
La neige vierge est la pour fournir ta glaciere;
Le torrent qui bondit sur le roc sybillin,
Et vole, diamant, neige, ecume et poussiere,
N'est plus bon qu'a tourner tes meules de moulin!"

In the burning indignation of this poem, M. De Banville reaches his
highest mark of attainment. "Les Exiles" is scarcely less impressive.
The outcast gods of Hellas, wandering in a forest of ancient Gaul, remind
one at once of the fallen deities of Heine, the decrepit Olympians of
Bruno, and the large utterance of Keats's "Hyperion." Among great
exiles, Victor Hugo, "le pere la-bas dans l'ile," is not forgotten:

"Et toi qui l'accueillis, sol libre et verdoyant,
Qui prodigues les fleurs sur tes coteaux fertiles,
Et qui sembles sourire a l'ocean bruyant,
Sois benie, ile verte, entre toutes les iles."

The hoarsest note of M. De Banville's lyre is that discordant one struck
in the "Idylles Prussiennes." One would not linger over poetry or prose
composed during the siege, in hours of shame and impotent scorn. The
poet sings how the sword, the flashing Durendal, is rusted and broken,
how victory is to him--

" . . . qui se cela
Dans un trou, sous