The Rooster's Stone, Poem by Rémy Belleau

Poem by Rémy Belleau Period 16th century

To France.

Bird who with faithful watch
Watching, keep the sentinel’s post
Beneath the silence of the night,
Waking with a bold voice
The troop heavy with sleep
And sloth, at your loud cry.

Bird with the purple crest,
Companion of the golden Dawn,
Trumpet of the Sun’s fires,
Who perch at the very hour
When he plunges his mane into the sea
To make himself brisk for work.

Was it not enough that the arrogance
Of your eye should tame the power
And the wrath of the proudest Lions,
Without, to win valiance,
This stone hardening still more
In the hollow belly of your gullets?

Witness that indomitable wrestler,
That strong Milo, impregnable,
Who, fortified by the virtue
Of this stone, for his glory
Has always won the victory,
Wherever he may have fought.

It is said further, that he who wears it
Has a clear mind, the ready grace
Of speaking well, and that by warming
The cold ice of his soul,
Of the proud rigors of his Lady
In the end he remains triumphant.

In the mouth it moderates
The thirst that burning makes us thirsty:
It is blackish, or of the color
Of crystal: and never is one found
That holds more than a bean
In length or in thickness.

Make it so that the race surnamed
With your name, whose renown
Is spread throughout the Universe,
Never alters the power
That it has sought by its valiance,
By force and by divers assaults.

Rémy Belleau

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

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