HyperEssays’s logoA group of three horizontal yellow bars over a thin diagonal red line balancing on a thick blue circle.
HyperEssays
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne Online

Twenty-Nine Sonnets of Étienne de La Boétie

Translated by HyperEssays.net (2020–24)

Book 1 Chapter 28

To Madame de Grammont, Countess of Guissen1

Madam, I offer you nothing of mine, either because it is already yours or because I find none of it worthy of you. But I wanted these verses, wherever they may be seen, to come after your name to grant them the honor of having the great Corisande of Andoins as their conductor. You are, I believe, the right person for this gift for there are few women in France who understand and appreciate poetry better than you do. And not one can breathe life into it as you do with the beautiful voice nature gave you when it found a million ways to make you beautiful.

Madam, these verses deserve your affection. I know you will agree with me that there are none that have come out of Gascony that are as creative and sweet, and none to claim to have come from a more impressive hand.

Now, do not be jealous because you have only the remains of what I have already published and dedicated to Monsieur de Foix,2 a fine relative of yours. There is something in them that is warmer and more alive because he wrote them when he was young and burning of a beautiful and noble desire of which, Madam, I will whisper in your ear one day. The other ones were written later, for his wife, when he was looking to marry her. You can already feel in them a certain marital chill. But I am of those who believe that poetry is never as pleasant as when it finds a joyful and free subject.

These verses are seen elsewhere.3