When by her couch her son may stay,
And press her hand, and watch her eyes,
And feel, though she revives to-day,
Perchance his hope to-morrow dies.

It is not thus, believe me, sir,
With this enchantress--she will call
Our second mother: Frenchmen err,
Who, cent'ries since, proclaimed her fall!
Our mother-tongue--all melody--
While music lives can never die.

Yes! she still lives, her words still ring;
Her children yet her carols sing;
And thousand years may roll away
Before her magic notes decay.

The people love their ancient songs, and will
While yet a people, love and keep them still:
These lays are as their mother; they recall
Fond thoughts of mother, sister, friends, and all
The many little things that please the heart,
The dreams, the hopes, from which we cannot part.
These songs are as sweet waters, where we find
Health in the sparkling wave that nerves the mind.
In ev'ry home, at ev'ry cottage door,
By ev'ry fireside, when our toil is o'er,
These songs are round us--near our cradles sigh,
And to the grave attend us when we die.

Oh, think, cold critics! 'twill be late and long,
Ere time shall sweep away this flood of song!
There are who bid this music sound no more,
And you can hear them, nor defend--deplore!
You, who were born where its first daisies grew,
Have fed upon its honey, sipp'd its dew,

Slept in its arms, and wakened to its kiss,
Danced to its sounds, and warbled to its tone--
You can forsake it in an hour like this!
Yes, weary of its age, renounce--disown--
And blame one minstrel who is true--alone!"¹

This is but a paraphrase of Jasmin's poem, which, as we have already said, cannot be verbally translated into any other language. Even the last editor of Jasmin's poems--Boyer d'Agen --does not translate them into French poetry, but into French prose. Much of the aroma of poetry evaporates in converting poetical thoughts from one language into another.

Jasmin, in one part of his poem, compares the ancient patois to one of the grand old elms in the Promenade de Gravier, which, having in a storm had some of its branches torn away, was ordered by the local authorities to be rooted up. The labourers worked away, but their pick-axes became unhafted. They could not up- root the tree; they grew tired and forsook the work. When the summer came, glorious verdure again clothed the remaining boughs; the birds sang sweetly in the branches, and the neighbours rejoiced that its roots had been so numerous and the tree had been so firmly planted.

Jasmin's description of his mother-tongue is most touching. Seasons pass away, and, as they roll on, their echoes sound in our ears; but the loved tongue shall not and must not die. The mother-tongue recalls our own dear mother, sisters, friends, and crowds of bygone associations, which press into our minds while sitting by the evening fire. This tongue is the language of our toils and labours; she comes to us at our birth, she lingers at our tomb.

"No, no--I cannot desert my mother-tongue!" said Jasmin. "It preserves the folk-lore of the district; it is the language of the poor, of the labourer, the shepherd, the farmer and grape-gatherers, of boys and girls, of brides and bridegrooms. The people," he said to M. Dumon, "love to hear my songs in their native dialect. You have enough poetry in classical French; leave me to please my compatriots in the dialect which they love. I cannot give up this harmonious language, our second mother, even though it has been condemned for three hundred years. Why! she still lives, her voice still sounds; like her, the seasons pass, the bells ring out their peals, and though a hundred thousand years may roll away, they will still be sounding and ringing!"

Jasmin has been compared to Dante. But there is this immense difference between them. Dante was virtually the creator of the Italian language, which was in its infancy when he wrote his 'Divine Comedy' some six hundred years ago, while Jasmin was merely reviving a gradually-expiring dialect. Drouilhet de Sigalas has said that Dante lived at the sunrise of his language, while Jasmin lived at its sunset. Indeed, Gascon was not a written language, and Jasmin had to collect his lexicon, grammar, and speech mostly from the