Ballad of the Mice, Poem by Charles Cros

Poem by Charles Cros Collection The Collar of ClawsPeriod 19th century

Where to find the coast and the sea,
Greenland, Africa, Iceland, Spain,
Where I might go off proud and free,
I who have never found my peer?
I have misery for company,
And in the deserted apartment
Not a breath of air is heard.
The mice are in the countryside.

But in this season of bread so dear,
When one loses the butter one earns,
Though the weather be pink and clear,
A winter’s counsel they give me:
“Go away to the mountain,
You’ll live on nothing in the ether.”
I leave, quitting this bitter world,
The mice are in the countryside.

And I should, shod in vair
Like the emperor Charlemagne,
Lead the world with iron,
Laughing at heaven and hell,

And at prison, and at the galleys,
And at the graveyard and the worm,
With lightning beneath my brow,
The mice are in the countryside.

Despite the winds Boreas, Auster,
Chaste Muse, lift a little your loincloth,
Give me freely your flesh.
The mice are in the countryside.

Charles Cros

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

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