Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas Poems

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas Biography

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544 – July 1590) was a French poet. A Huguenot, he served under Henry of Navarre. He is known as an epic poet. La Sepmaine; ou, Creation du monde (1578) was a hugely influential hexameral work, relating the creation of the world and the history of man. It was translated into many languages, including English, and helped inspire Milton's Paradise Lost. It was followed quickly by La Seconde Sepmaine (1584) which Du Bartas did not manage to finish before falling fatally ill. Du Bartas and the Scottish Court James VI of Scotland was particularly impressed by Du Bartas after receiving a volume of his poetry in 1579. He translated Uranie which appeared in his first poetical publication Essayes of a Prentise The significance of this poem was that the muse Uranie manifests herself to persuade the poet to concentrate on religious rather than secular poetry: O ye that wolde your browes with Laurel bind, What larger feild I pray you can you find, Then is his praise, who brydles heavens most cleare Makes mountaines tremble, and howest (sic) hells to feare? Thomas Hudson, part of the coterie of poets gathered around James court, sometimes known as the "Castalian Band" translated Judith in 1584. James contributed a laudatory sonnet to the publication. Du Bartas responded by translating James' Lepanto and in 1587 he was sent by Henry of Navarre to the Scottish court to discuss the possibility of James marrying Henri's sister. Although poetry was also a shared interest, James failed in his attempt to persuade Du Bartas to stay in Scotland. James regarded Du Bartas very highly and encouraged other poets to translate his works, following his accession to the English throne. Thomas Winter quotes from James' Basilikon Doron where he touches on Du Bartas, in the dedicatory epistle of his translation of du Bartas's Third Dayes Creation (1604). Joshua Sylvester, another English poet around the court of King James, also translated Essay of the Second Week (1598) and The Divine Weeks of the World's Birth (1604). Du Bartas' poems went rapidly out of fashion as the 17th century, characterised by a tight and precise style, reacted against its somewhat wordy and expansive - and at times unintentionally pathetic - verse, and Du Bartas has never regained the popularity he once enjoyed.)

The Best Poem Of Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas

La Nuit

... L'architecte du monde ordonna qu'à leur tour
Le jour suivist la nuict, la nuict suivist le jour.
La nuict peut temperer du jour la secheresse,
Humecte nostre ciel et nos guerets engresse ;
La nuict est celle-là qui de ses ailes sombres
Sur le monde muet fait avecques les ombres
Desgouter le silence, et couler dans les os
Des recreus animaux un sommeilleux repos.
Ô douce Nuict, sans toy, sans toy l'humaine vie
Ne seroit qu'un enfer, où le chagrin, l'envie,
La peine, l'avarice et cent façons de morts
Sans fin bourrelleroyent et nos murs et nos corps.
Ô Nuict, tu vas ostant le masque et la faintise
Dont sur l'humain théatre en vain on se desguise,
Tandis que le jour luit : ô Nuict alme, par toy
Sont faits du tout esgaux le bouvier et le Roy,
Le pauvre et l'opulent, le Grec et le Barbare,
Le juge et l'accusé, le sçavant et l'ignare,
Le maistre et le valet, le difforme et le beau :
Car, Nuict, tu couvres tout de ton obscur manteau...

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