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Death does not take the wise by surprise;
He is always ready to depart,
Having known how to warn himself
Of the time when one must resolve to make that passage.
That time, alas! embraces all times:
Whether we divide it into days, into hours, into moments,
There is not one that it does not include
In the fatal tribute; all belong to its domain;
And the first instant when the children of kings
Open their eyes to the light,
Is the one that sometimes comes
To close their eyelids forever.
Defend yourself by greatness,
Plead beauty, virtue, youth,
Death snatches all without shame;
One day the whole world will swell its riches.
There is nothing less unknown,
And since I must say it,
Nothing for which one is less prepared.
A dying man who counted more than a hundred years of life,
Complained to Death that too hastily
She forced him to leave right away,
Without his having made his will,
Without warning him at least. Is it just that one dies
On the spot? he said: wait a little.
My wife does not want me to leave without her;
I still have to provide for a great-nephew;
Allow me to add one more wing to my house.
How pressing you are, O cruel Goddess!
— Old man, Death said to him, I did not take you by surprise;
You complain without reason of my impatience. And have you not a hundred years? find me in Paris
Two mortals as old, find me ten in France.
I ought, as you say, to have given you some warning
To dispose you to the matter:
I would have found your will all made,
Your grandson provided for, your building finished;
Were no warnings given you when the cause
Of walking and of movement,
When the spirits, the feeling,
When everything failed in you? No more taste, no more hearing:
Everything seems to have vanished for you:
For you the star of day takes superfluous care:
You regret goods that no longer touch you.
I have shown you your comrades,
Either dead, or dying, or ill.
What is all that but a warning?
Come now, old man, and without reply.
It does not matter to the republic
Whether you make your will.
Death was right. I wish that at that age
One left life as from a banquet,
Thanking one’s host, and packed one’s bag;
For how much can one delay the journey?
You murmur, old man; see these young people die,
See them walk, see them run
To deaths, it is true, glorious and beautiful,
But certain nonetheless, and sometimes cruel.
In vain I cry it out to you; my zeal is indiscreet:
The one most like the dead dies most reluctantly.
Jean de La Fontaine
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/fable-death-and-the-dying-man-jean-de-la-fontaine/