One of the great things about working on a project like this is to find in a library in Paris a nonsense love poem that has been lying around for a few centuries and which turns out to be a rather lovely thing from the past. Here is a sample:
Mais quand douze Elephans dans un noyau de prune
Joueront du Violon aux rayons de la Lune
On verra dans vos beaux yeux reluire Cupidon
Car si vostre merite avoit pris ses lunettes
Tous les quatre Elemens danseroient les sonnettes
Et se feroient la barbe avec un Espadon.
But when twelve elephants in a plum stone
Will play the violin in the moonbeams
Cupid will be seen shining in your beautiful eyes
Because if your merit had worn its glasses
All four elements would dance like little bells
And would shave with a short sword.
The last stanza rhymes liberty with fantasy, true freedom found in the imagination…:
Depuis que la vertu habite en l’Univers
L’Enclume a regardé le Marteau de travers
A cause que les Dieux boivent de l’Ambrosie
On a tant recherché dans l’antiquité
Qu’en fin on a treuvé que nostre liberté
Gist en la fantaisie.
Since virtue has lived in the universe
The anvil has looked askance at the hammer
Because the gods drink ambrosia
We have searched so much in antiquity
That in the end we have found that our liberty
Lies in fantasy.