Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, with Other Poems — John Shaqi
Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, with Other Poems
General
Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, with Other Poems
Ballads, French; Folk songs, French; French poetry -- Translations into English
Come, you shall wear the raiment white
You wore of old, when the world was gay,
We will wander in woods of the heart’s delight
The whole of the Sunday holiday.
Come, we will sit by the wayside inn,
Come, and your song will gain force to fly,
Dipping its wing in the clear and thin
Wine, as of old, ere it scale the sky.
Musette, who had scarcely forgotten withal
One beautiful dawn of the new year’s best,
Returned at the end of the carnival,
A flown bird, to a forsaken nest.
Ah faithless and fair! I embrace her yet,
With no heart-beat, and with never a sigh;
And Musette, no longer the old Musette,
Declares that I am no longer I.
Farewell, my dear that was once so dear,
Dead with the death of our latest love;
Our youth is laid in its sepulchre,
The calendar stands for a stone above.
’Tis only in searching the dust of the days,
The ashes of all old memories,
That we find the key of the woodland ways
That lead to the place of our paradise.
THE THREE CAPTAINS.
ALL beneath the white-rose tree
Walks a lady fair to see,
She is as white as the snows,
She is as fair as the day:
From her father’s garden close
Three knights have ta’en her away.
He has ta’en her by the hand,
The youngest of the three—
‘Mount and ride, my bonnie bride,
On my white horse with me.’
And ever they rode, and better rode,
Till they came to Senlis town,
The hostess she looked hard at them
As they were lighting down.
‘And are ye here by force,’ she said,
‘Or are ye here for play?
From out my father’s garden close
Three knights me stole away.
‘And fain would I win back,’ she said,
‘The weary way I come;
And fain would see my father dear,
And fain go maiden home.’
‘Oh, weep not, lady fair,’ said she,
‘You shall win back,’ she said,
‘For you shall take this draught from me
Will make you lie for dead.’
‘Come in and sup, fair lady,’ they said,
‘Come busk ye and be bright;
It is with three bold captains
That ye must be this night.’
When they had eaten well and drunk,
She fell down like one slain:
‘Now, out and alas! for my bonny may
Shall live no more again.’
‘Within her father’s garden stead
There are three white lilies;
With her body to the lily bed,
With her soul to Paradise.’
They bore her to her father’s house,
They bore her all the three,
They laid her in her father’s close,
Beneath the white-rose tree.
She had not lain a day, a day,
A day but barely three,
When the may awakes, ‘Oh, open, father,
Oh, open the door for me.
‘’Tis I have lain for dead, father,
Have lain the long days three,
That I might maiden come again
To my mother and to thee.’
THE BRIDGE OF DEATH.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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