Contrerime XXXV

I have been remiss - no posts to this blog for more than a year. And now I am skipping ten poems to go to XXXV. I will go back, but this one is the most recent to have been translated and versified. So here it is.

Contrerime XXXV
Un Jurançon 93
     Aux couleurs du maïs,
Et ma mie, et l'air du pays :
     Que mon coeur était aise.

Ah, les vignes de Jurançon,
     Se sont-elles fanées,
Comme ont fait mes belles années,
     Et mon bel échanson ?

Dessous les tonnelles fleuries
     Ne reviendrez-vous point
A l'heure où Pau blanchit au loin
     Par-delà les prairies ?

Translation

The Jurançon 93 

     The colour of corn, 

And my girl, and the country morn -

     How my heart was free!   

Is the Jurançon atrophied

     Perished with drought, 

Just like my gilded youth,

     And my fair Ganymede?   

‘neath the flowering shadows

      Will you not come again

At the hour when Pau grows faint

     Far beyond the meadows?

A note on the wine

The vine is cultivated in Jurançon and in the nearby hills, on extremely steep slopes at the foot of the Pyrenees. The quantity of wine produced is limited. It is white, a golden colour, sweet with a hint of Madeira. According to legend, the grandfather of Henry IV rubbed the lips of his grand-son with a clove of garlic and had him swallow a few drops of Jurançon a few moments after birth. When the baby did not protest too much, he exclaimed: "You will be a true Béarnais! "