Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore,
Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar.
Haste, ye light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile;
Love's panthers sleep 'mid roses, as of yore:
'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'

ENVOI.

"Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.
All, singing birds, your happy music pour;
Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile;
Flit to these ancient gods we still adore:
'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.'"


Alas! the mists that veil the shore of our Cythera are not the
summer haze of Watteau, but the smoke and steam of a commercial
time.

It is as a lyric poet that we have studied M. De Banville. "Je ne
m'entends qu'e la meurique," he says in his ballad on himself; but
he can write prose when he pleases.

It is in his drama of Gringoire acted at the Theatre Francais, and
familiar in the version of Messrs. Pollock and Besant, that M. De
Banville's prose shows to the best advantage. Louis XI. is supping
with his bourgeois friends and with the terrible Olivier le Daim.
Two beautiful girls are of the company, friends of Pierre Gringoire,
the strolling poet. Presently Gringoire himself appears. He is
dying of hunger; he does not recognise the king, and he is promised