At La Chaudeau, had fate decreed
To limit the wandering life I lead,
Peradventure I still, forsooth,
Should have preserved my fresh green youth,
Under the shadows the hill-tops throw
At La Chaudeau.
At La Chaudeau, live on, my friends,
Happy to be where God intends;
And sometimes, by the evening fire,
Think of him whose sole desire
Is again to sit in the old chateau
At La Chaudeau.
A QUIET LIFE.
Let him who will, by force or fraud innate,
Of courtly grandeurs gain the slippery height;
I, leaving not the home of my delight,
Far from the world and noise will meditate.
Then, without pomps or perils of the great,
I shall behold the day succeed the night;
Behold the alternate seasons take their flight,
And in serene repose old age await.
And so, whenever Death shall come to close
The happy moments that my days compose,
I, full of years, shall die, obscure, alone!
How wretched is the man, with honors crowned,
Who, having not the one thing needful found,
Dies, known to all, but to himself unknown.
THE WINE OF JURANÇON
BY CHARLES CORAN
Little sweet wine of Jurançon,
You are dear to my memory still!
With mine host and his merry song,
Under the rose-tree I drank my fill.
Twenty years after, passing that way,
Under the trellis I found again
Mine host, still sitting there au frais,
And singing still the same refrain.