ok it's 23 hours till everything is over for me
till i bid farewell to my shrine of mugging for the past month for good..

yupz,this has been where i sprawled amidst notes when at home..

clock's whirling
and i've only done one out of three books.
it was real hard gettin myself to settle down and read and think and dream..
yes that's the blessed thing about lit-
you get to dream
implant yourself into the world of the characters you read
breathing life into them as they breathe into you..

came across the caption 'ou sont les neiges' and decided to find out just what was it about..
basically,it's a love poem.
ballad actually.
here goes:


Ballade (des dames de temps jadis)
François Villon
c.1461

Dictes moy ou, n’en quel pays,
Est Flora la belle Rommaine,
Archipiades ne Thaïs,
Qui fut sa cousine germaine,
Echo parlant quant bruyt on maine
Dessus riviere ou sus estan,
Qui beaulté ot trop plus q’humaine.
Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan?

Ou est la très sage Helloïs,
Pour qui chastré fut et puis moyne
Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis?
Pour son amour ot ceste essoyne.
Semblablement, ou est la royne
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fust geté en ung sac en Saine?
Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan?

La royne Blanche comme lis
Qui chantoit a voix de seraine,
Berte au grand pié, Beatris, Alis,
Haremburgis qui tint le Maine,
Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine
Qu’Englois brulerent a Rouan;
Ou sont ilz, ou, Vierge souvraine?
Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan?

Prince, n’enquerez de sepmaine
Ou elles sont, ne de cest an,
Qu’a ce reffrain ne vous remaine:
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?


Ballade (of the Ladies of Ancient Times)
Trans. Robin Shirley
1993

Tell me where, or in what land,
is Flora the fair Roman girl,
Archipiada, or Thaïs,
who was her match in beauty’s hall,
Echo who answered when one called
over rivers or still pools,
whose loveliness was more than human?
Where are the snows of yesteryear?

Where is Héloïse, so wise, for whom
Pierre Abelard was first unmanned
then cloistered up at Saint Denis?
For her love he bore these trials.
And where now can one find that queen
by whose command was Buridan
thrown in a sack into the Seine?
Where are the snows of yesteryear?

Queen Blanche, light as a lily,
who sang with a mermaid’s voice,
Bertha Bigfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
Arembourg, heiress to Maine,
and Joan, the good maid of Lorraine
whom the English griddled at Rouen;
where are they, where, O Sovereign Virgin?
Where are the snows of yesteryear?

Prince, don’t ask me in a week
or in a year what place they are;
I can only give you this refrain:
Where are the snows of yesteryear?


it was originally written by a french vagabond poet back in days of yore..
love truly is a universal language which transcends time..
shakespeare definitely agrees..

Sonnet XVIII
SHALL I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.



is love truly that awesome..
it's been immortalised in the works of many great poets and artists..
yet these were also the very same people crudely trampled upon by the upper echelons of civilised society during their time
can their words and works still be taken seriously then?
fools seem to give the better advice
i'ld be the fool then
you gotta experience it yourself.





i did.