When I Have Been Twenty or Thirty Months

Poem by Pierre De Ronsard Collection OdesThemes Nature, SadnessPeriod 16th century

When I have been twenty or thirty months
Without returning to Vendômois,
Full of vagabond thoughts,
Full of remorse and care,
To the rocks I complain thus,
To the woods, the caves and the waves.

Rocks, though you be aged
Three thousand years, you never change
Either state or form;
But always my youth flees,
And old age that follows me,
Transforms me from young man to old.

Woods, though you lose every year
In winter your pleasant hair,
The following year that renews itself,
Renews also your head;
But mine cannot anew
Have its new wig.

Caves, I have seen myself at your place
Once having green knees,
A nimble body, and a good hand;
But now I have a harder body,
And knees, than the wall
That coldly surrounds you.

Waves, endlessly you stroll
And you lead and bring back
Your floods with a course that does not linger;
And I without making long stay
I go, by night and by day,
To the place from which one returns no more.

Yet I would not wish
To have been rock or wood
To have thicker skin,
And conquer feathered time;
For thus hard I would not have loved
You who made me old, Mistress.

Pierre de Ronsard

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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