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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow ON THE DEATH OF ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR, A CELEBRATED ACTRESS. - The Works of Voltaire, Vol. X The Dramatic Works Part 1 (Zaire, Caesar, The Prodigal, Prefaces) and Part II (The Lisbon Earthquake and Other Poems).

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ON THE DEATH OF ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR, A CELEBRATED ACTRESS. - Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire, Vol. X The Dramatic Works Part 1 (Zaire, Caesar, The Prodigal, Prefaces) and Part II (The Lisbon Earthquake and Other Poems). [1901]

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From The Works of Voltaire, A Contemporary Version, (New York: E.R. DuMont, 1901), A Critique and Biography by John Morley, notes by Tobias Smollett, trans. William F. Fleming. Vol. X The Dramatic Works Part 1 (Zaire, Caesar, The Prodigal, Prefaces) and Part II (The Lisbon Earthquake and Other Poems).

Part of: The Works of Voltaire. A Contemporary Version, in 21 vols.

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ON THE DEATH OF ADRIENNE LECOUVREUR, A CELEBRATED ACTRESS.

  • What sight of woe thus harrows up my soul!
  • Must those love-darting eyes in anguish roll?
  • Shall ghastly death such charms divine invade?
  • You muses, graces, loves come to her aid.
  • Oh! you my gods and hers assist the fair,
  • Your image sure must well deserve your care.
  • Alas! thou diest, I press thy corpse alone;
  • Thou diest, the fatal news too soon is known.
  • In such a loss, each tender feeling heart
  • Is touched like mine, and takes in grief a part.
  • I hear the arts on every side deplore
  • Their loss, and cry, “Melpomene’s no more:”
  • What exclamations will the future race
  • Utter, at hearing of those arts’ disgrace?
  • See cruel men a burying place refuse,
  • To her whom Greece had worshipped as a muse;
  • When living, they adored her power divine,
  • To her they bowed like votaries at a shrine:
  • Should she then, breathless, criminal be thought,
  • And is it then to charm the world a fault?
  • Seine’s* banks should now no more be deemed profane,
  • Lecouvreur’s sacred ashes there remain:
  • At this sad tomb, shrine sacred to thy shade,
  • Our vows are still as at a temple paid.
  • I don’t revere the famed St. Denis more,
  • Thy graces, charms, and wit, I there adore
  • I loved them living, incense now I’ll burn,
  • And pay due honors to thy sacred urn.
  • Though error and ingratitude are bent,
  • To brand with infamy thy monument.
  • Shall Frenchmen never know what they require,
  • But damn capriciously what they admire?
  • Must laws with manners jar? Must every mind
  • In France, be made by superstition blind?
  • Wherefore should England be the only clime,
  • Where to think freely is not deemed a crime?
  • Oh! London, Athens’ rival, thou alone,
  • Could tyrants, and could prejudice dethrone;
  • In that blest region, general freedom reigns,
  • Merit is honored, and reward obtains:
  • Marlborough the greatest general of his age,
  • Harmonious Dryden, Addison the sage,
  • Immortal Newton, charming Oldfield there,
  • The honors due to real genius share.
  • The farce of life had there Lecouvreur closed
  • With heroes, statesmen, kings she had reposed:
  • Genius at London makes its owner great,
  • Freedom and wealth have in that happy state,
  • Procured the inhabitants immortal fame,
  • They rival now the Greek and Roman name.
  • Parnassian laurels wither in our fields,
  • And France no more a crop of merit yields:
  • Wherefore you gods do all our glories fade,
  • Why is not honor due to genius paid?

[* ] She was buried on a bank of the Seine.