BÉRANGER TO THE ACADEMY.
No, no, O my friends, obtain no honours for me,
For your Institute I feel I never was born,
There are poets far better, that would grace it, you see,
I—I am no scholar, but a fiddler low-born.
I know but to live, to love, to sing like the brook;
I'll tell you my want, I'd like to live through this season
And read at my leisure; dear Lisette is my book,
And my house my Institute—pray deem this not treason.
What—what should I do, 'mid your discussion and strife?
I should have to write out, first of all, a discourse;
Nought ever saving songs have I writ in my life,
And these welled without effort, nor was learning their source.
Here, gentlemen, the Muse is familiar and gay,
Provided there be rhyme, none asks here for reason,
Here Courier has commented on Molière by the day,
My house is my Institute—oh, deem it not treason.
Ivy-covered, you see it, 'tis decrepit with age,
But its swallows are punctual at the advent of spring.
What! Ye deem me, birds vagrant, confined to my cage?
I skim through past ages, and the world, on my wing!
