at party.

Another of the poems greatly admired by George Sand was _Le Forcat_.

_Regarder le forcat sur la poutre equarrie
Poser son sein hale que le remords carie_. . .

Certainly if Banville were to lay claim to having invented rhymes that
are puns, we could only say that he was a plagiarist after reading
Charles Poncy.

In another poem addressed to the rich, entitled _L'hiver_, the poet
notices with grief that the winter

. . . _qui remplit les salons, les Watres,
Remplit aussi la Morgue et les amphitheatres._

He is afraid that the people will, in the end, lose their patience, and
so he gives to the happy mortals on this earth the following counsel:

_Riches, a vos plaisirs faites participer
L'homme que les malheurs s'acharnent a frapper
Oh, faites travailler le pere de famille,
Pour qu'il puisse arbiter la pudeur de sa fille,
Pourqu'aux petits enfants maigris par les douleurs
Il rapporte, le soir, le pain et non des pleurs,
Afin que son epouse, au desespoir en proie,
Se ranime a sa vue et l'embrasse avec joie,
Afin qua l'Eternel, a l'heure de sa mort.
Vous n'offriez pas un coeur carie de remords_.

The expression certainly leaves much to be desired in these poems, but
they are not lacking in eloquence. We had already had something of this
kind, though, written by a poet who was not a bricklayer. He, too, had
asked the rich the question following:

_Dans vos fetes d'hiver, riches, heureux du monde,
Quand le bal tournoyant de ses feux vous inonde. . .
Songez-vous qu'il est la, sous le givre et la neige,
Ce pere sans travail que la famine assiege?_

He advises them to practise charity, the sister of prayer.

"_Donnez afin qu'un jour, a votre derniere heure,
Contre tous vos peches vous ayez la Priere
D'un mendiant puissant au ciel_."

We cannot, certainly, expect Poncy to be a Victor Hugo. But as we had
Victor Hugo's verses, of what use was it for them to be rewritten by
Poncy? My reason for quoting a few of the fine lines from _Feuilles
d'automne_ is that I felt an urgent need of clearing away all these
platitudes. Poncy was not the only working-man poet. Other trades
produced their poets too. The first poem in _Marines_ is addressed to
Durand, a poet carpenter, who introduces himself as "_Enfant de la foret
qui ceint Fontainebleau_."

This man handled the plane and the lyre, just as Poncy did