He Who Drinks …, Poem by Pierre De Ronsard

Poem by Pierre De Ronsard Collection The MélangesThemes Food, LovePeriod 16th century

He who drinks, as Nicander sang,
Of aconite, his mind is troubled,
All he sees seems doubled to him,
And upon his eyes night spreads.

He who drinks of Cassandra’s love,
Which through her eyes has flowed into his heart,
He loses reason, he becomes mad,
A hundred times a day the Fate comes to take him.

But quicklime, or rust, or wine,
Or molten gold can well put an end
To the cruel evil that aconite gives:

Death alone has the power to heal
The heart of those whom Cassandra poisons,
But happy is he who can thus die.

Pierre de Ronsard

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

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