Washerwomen old,
    To the sound they beat,
    Sing by rivers cold,
With uncovered heads and feet. 
      Let us by the fire
      Ever higher
Sing them till the night expire.

    Who by the fireside stands
    Stamps his feet and sings;
    But he who blows his hands
Not so gay a carol brings. 
      Let us by the fire
      Ever higher
Sing them till the night expire!

CONSOLATION

To M. Duperrier, Gentleman of Aix in Provence, on the
Death of his Daughter.

BY FRANCOISE MALHERBE

Will then, Duperrier, thy sorrow be eternal? 
    And shall the sad discourse
Whispered within thy heart, by tenderness paternal,
    Only augment its force?

Thy daughter’s mournful fate, into the tomb descending
    By death’s frequented ways,
Has it become to thee a labyrinth never ending,
    Where thy lost reason strays?

I know the charms that made her youth a benediction: 
    Nor should I be content,
As a censorious friend, to solace thine affliction
    By her disparagement.

But she was of the world, which fairest things exposes
    To fates the most forlorn;
A rose, she too hath lived as long as live the roses,
    The space of one brief morn.

* * * * *

Death has his rigorous laws, unparalleled, unfeeling;
    All prayers to him are vain;
Cruel, he stops his ears, and, deaf to our appealing,
    He leaves us to complain.

The poor man in his hut, with only thatch for cover,
    Unto these laws must bend;
The sentinel that guards the barriers of the Louvre
    Cannot our kings defend.

To murmur against death, in petulant defiance,
    Is never for the best;
To will what God doth will, that is the only science
    That gives us any rest.

TO CARDINAL RICHELIEU

BY FRANCOIS DE MALHERBE

Thou mighty Prince of Church and State,
Richelieu! until the hour of death,
Whatever road man chooses, Fate
Still holds him subject to her breath. 
Spun of all silks, our days and nights
Have sorrows woven with delights;
And of this intermingled shade
Our various destiny appears,
Even as one sees the course of years
Of summers and of winters made.

Sometimes the soft, deceitful hours
Let us enjoy the halcyon wave;
Sometimes impending peril lowers
Beyond the seaman’s skill to save,
The Wisdom, infinitely wise,
That gives to human destinies
Their foreordained necessity,
Has made no law more fixed below,
Than the alternate ebb and flow
Of Fortune and Adversity.

THE ANGEL AND THE CHILD