Alas, If You See Me Constant in Inconstancy

Poem by Jean-Antoine De Baïf Collection Loves of FrancinePeriod 16th century

Alas, if you see me constant in inconstancy
And changing my words and shifting my face,
As the tide of love pulls me back or pushes me forward;

Alas, if you see me varying from hour to hour,
From moment to moment between reason and rage,
Without anything remaining the same in me for an instant:

You say that I make you doubt, my Francine,
By what should give you more assurance
Of the hot fire of love that burns in my breast.

Alas, you see well enough what makes me fickle:
And who has seen a ship in certain constancy
Not waver here and there in the midst of a storm?

And so many storms of cruel love trouble
My frenzied mind, that reason, little cautious,
Abandons its helm to the waves, which redouble.

Thus Francine, thus in everything else variable
Except in your love, in doing some fault,
I show myself in my faith firmly immutable.

Jean-Antoine de Baïf

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

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