Près de sa dernière heure,
D'une source à l'ombre, et qui pleure,
Fauste, il me souvient ;
De la nymphe limpide et noire
Qui frémissait tout bas
- Avec mon coeur - quand tu courbas
Tes hanches, pour y boire.
Like that Laconian king
On his death bed
Fauste, I am minded
Of a shady, sobbing spring;
Of a nymph limpid and black
That quivered, silent
- As my heart - when you bent
Your thirst to slake.
Notes: Agesipolis III was the
31st and last of the kings of the Agiad
dynasty in ancient Sparta.
He was elected king while still a minor, but was soon deposed by
his colleague Lycurgus. While Toulet might have read about him in Plutarch, Peter Cogman believes it more likely that he found the anecdote in the Dictionnaire
historique et critique of Pierre Bayle, his bedside reader:- “Se souvenant du
temple de Bacchus qu’il avait vu à Aphite, il souhaita de jouir de l’ombre,
& de la fraicheur des eaux claires de cet endroit-là. Il y fut porté en
vie, mais il mourut hors du tempe le 7 jour de sa fièvre.”
