BALTHAZAR'S DAUGHTER

 

 

"A curious preference for the artificial should be mentioned as characteristic of ALESSANDRO DE MEDICI'S poetry. For his century was anything but artless; the great commonplaces that form the main stock of human thought were no longer in their first flush, and he addressed a people no longer childish.… Unquestionably his fancies were fantastic, anti-natural, bordering on hallucination, and they betray a desire for impossible novelty; but it is allowable to prefer them to the sickly simplicity¹ of those so-called poems that embroider² with old faded wools upon the canvas of worn-out truisms, trite³, trivial and idiotically sentimental⁴ patterns."

 

Let me have dames⁵ and damsels richly clad

    To feed and tend my mirth,

Singing by day and night to make me glad;

 

Let me have fruitful gardens of great girth

    Fill'd with the strife⁶ of birds,

With water-springs, and beasts that house i' the earth.

 

Let me seem Solomon for lore⁷ of words,

Samson for strength, for beauty Absalom.

 

    Knights⁸ as my serfs be given;

And as I will, let music go and come;

Till, when I will, I will to enter Heaven.

 

ALESSANDRO DE MEDICI.—Madrigal, from D. G. Rossetti's version.

 

1 simplicity   

n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯

参考例句：

• She dressed with elegant simplicity.她穿着朴素高雅。
• The beauty of this plan is its simplicity.简明扼要是这个计划的一大特点。

2 embroider   

v.刺绣于(布)上；给…添枝加叶，润饰

参考例句：

• The editor would take a theme and embroider upon it with drollery.编辑会将一篇文章，以调侃式的幽默笔调加以渲染。
• She wants to embroider a coverlet with flowers and birds.她想给床罩绣上花鸟。

3 trite   

adj.陈腐的

参考例句：

• The movie is teeming with obvious and trite ideas.这部电影充斥着平铺直叙的陈腐观点。
• Yesterday,in the restaurant,Lorraine had seemed trite,blurred,worn away.昨天在饭店里，洛兰显得庸俗、堕落、衰老了。

4 sentimental   

adj.多愁善感的，感伤的

参考例句：

• She's a sentimental woman who believes marriage comes by destiny.她是多愁善感的人，她相信姻缘命中注定。
• We were deeply touched by the sentimental movie.我们深深被那感伤的电影所感动。

5 dames   

n.（在英国）夫人（一种封号），夫人（爵士妻子的称号）( dame的名词复数 )；女人

参考例句：

• Dames would not comment any further. Dames将不再更多的评论。 来自互联网
• Flowers, candy, jewelry, seemed the principal things in which the elegant dames were interested. 鲜花、糖果和珠宝看来是那些贵妇人的主要兴趣所在。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

6 strife   

n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争

参考例句：

• We do not intend to be drawn into the internal strife.我们不想卷入内乱之中。
• Money is a major cause of strife in many marriages.金钱是造成很多婚姻不和的一个主要原因。

7 lore   

n.传说；学问，经验，知识

参考例句：

• I will seek and question him of his lore.我倒要找上他，向他讨教他的渊博的学问。
• Early peoples passed on plant and animal lore through legend.早期人类通过传说传递有关植物和动物的知识。

8 knights   

骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马

参考例句：

• stories of knights and fair maidens 关于骑士和美女的故事
• He wove a fascinating tale of knights in shining armour. 他编了一个穿着明亮盔甲的骑士的迷人故事。