Etienne Jodelle's I Love the Laurel Green (tr. Charles Causley)

I Love The Laurel Green

I love the laurel green, whose verdant flame

Burns its bright victory on the winter day,

Calls to eternity its happy name,

And neither death nor time shall wear away.

I love the holly tree with branches keen,

Each leaflet fringed with daggers sharp and small,

I love the ivy, too, winding its green,

Its ardent stem about the oak, the wall.

I love these three, whose living green and true

Is as unfailing as my love for you

Always by night and day whom I adore.

Yet the green wound that stays with me more

Is ever greener than these three shall be:

Laurel and ivy and the holly tree.

-Etienne Jodelle (tr. Charles Causley)

 

Well, it's not winter yet, but we've reached that time when most of the greens have changed to red and yellow and are fast disappearing; all the green that's left are those three.

 

Étienne Jodelle (1532-1573) was a French poet and dramatist, one of the members of that group of poets known as La Pléiade. Joachim du Bellay, the founder of La Pléiade, showed up on the blog in a translation by Richard Wilbur. This lovely translation is by Charles Causley and is from his book Secret Destinations. 

 

I looked up the French, just because...

J'aime le verd laurier

J'aime le verd laurier, dont l'hyver ny la glace

N'effacent la verdeur en tout victorieuse,

Monstrant l'eternité à jamais bien heureuse

Que le temps, ny la mort ne change ny efface.

J'aime du hous aussi la toujours verte face

Les poignons eguillons de sa fueille espineuse:

J'aime la lierre aussi, et sa branche amoureuse

Qui le chesne ou le mur estroitement embrasse.

J'aime bien tous ces trois, qui toujours verds ressemblent

Aux pensers immorteles, qui dedans moy s'assemblent,

De toy que nuict et jour idolatre, j'adore:

Mais ma playe, et poincture, et le Noeu qui me serre,

Est plus verte, et poignante, et plus estroit encore

Que n'est le verd laurier, ny le hous, ny le lierre.

-Étienne Jodelle

It's archaic now, of course, but it didn't actually seem that difficult, at least once I learned the words for ivy and holly...