Ballade des dames du temps jadis

I went to poetry and poetics.

That had three papers, and they were all great, but my favorite was called What's in a Name? Jadis, Narnia, and Francois Villon by the Reverend Brian McGreevy.

He talks about a poem, and again, apologies to all of France for my pronunciation, but I mean it well, because I loved everything about this.

It's a old poem called Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis.

Or Ballad of the Ladies of Yesteryear, something like that.

I actually got to speak to, uh, the Reverend Brian McGreevy afterward, and he was saying that there's not any good translations of the poem, not even now.

And, but he's speaking about this, this nostalgia of, of days gone by and things like that.

But the last word in that, jadis, is Jadis if you pronounce it out, you know, Anglicized, it's Jadis.

Recording by Leonard Wilson.

The Ballad of Dead Ladies by Dante Gabriel Rossetti Tell me now in what hidden way Is Lady Flora, the lovely Roman; Where's Hipparchia, and where is Theis, Neither of them the fairer woman; Where is Echo, beheld of no man, Only heard on river and mere, She whose beauty was more than human: But where are the snows of yesteryear? Where's Heloise the learned nun, For whose sake Abelard, I ween, Lost manhood and put priesthood on; From love he won such dole and teen.

And where, I pray you, is the Queen Who willed that Buridan should steer, Sewed in a sack's mouth, down the Seine: But where are the snows of yesteryear? White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, With a voice like any mermaiden; Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice, And Ermengarde the Lady of Maine; And that good Joan whom Englishmen At Rouen doomed and burned her there: Mother of God, where are they then? But where are the snows of yesteryear? Nay, never ask this week, fair lord, Where they are gone, nor yet this year, Except with this for an over-word: But where are the snows of yesteryear? End of The Ballad of Dead Ladies by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Recording by Leonard Wilson of Springfield, Ohio.

Section Twenty-Nine of Selected Poems by Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.