"Prince, let us leave the din, the dust, the spite,
The gloom and glare of towns, the plague, the blight;
Amid the forest leaves and fountain spray
There is the mystic home of our delight,
And through the dim wood Dian thrids her way."


The piece is characteristic of M. De Banville's genius. Through his
throng of operatic nixies and sylphs of the ballet the cold Muse
sometimes passes, strange, but not unfriendly. He, for his part,
has never degraded the beautiful forms of old religion to make the
laughing-stock of fools. His little play, Diane au Bois, has grace,
and gravity, and tenderness like the tenderness of Keats, for the
failings of immortals. "The gods are jealous exceedingly if any
goddess takes a mortal man to her paramour, as Demeter chose
Iasion." The least that mortal poets can do is to show the
Olympians an example of toleration.

"Les Cariatides" have delayed us too long. They are wonderfully
varied, vigorous, and rich, and full of promise in many ways. The
promise has hardly been kept. There is more seriousness in "Les
Stalactites" (1846), it is true, but then there is less daring.
There is one morsel that must be quoted,--a fragment fashioned on
the air and the simple words that used to waken the musings of
George Sand when she was a child, dancing with the peasant children:


"Nous n'irons plus an bois: les lauries sont coupes,
Les amours des bassins, les naiades en groupe
Voient reluire au soleil, en cristaux decoupes