Poems (Chesterton, 1915)/Translation from du Bellay
For other English-language translations of this work, see Heureux qui comme Ulysse.
TRANSLATION FROM DU BELLAY
HAPPY, who like Ulysses or that lord
Who raped the fleece, returning full sage,
With usage and the world's wide reason stored,
With his own kin can wait the end of age.
When shall I see, when shall I see, God knows!
My little village smoke; or pass the door,
The old dear door of that unhappy house
That is to me a kingdom and much more?
Mightier to me the house my fathers made
Than your audacious heads, O Halls of Rome!
More than immortal marbles undecayed,
The thin sad slates that cover up my home;
More than your Tiber is my Loire to me,
Than Palatine my little Lyré there;
And more than all the winds of all the sea
The quiet kindness of the Angevin air.