This poem is actually Yeats’s translation of a sonnet by the French poet Pierre de Ronsard (1524-85).
QUAND VOUS SEREZ BIEN VIEILLE
Quand vous serez bien vielle, au soir, a la chandelle,
Assise aupres du feu, devidant et filant,
Direz chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant:
Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j’estois belle.
Lors vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Desja sous le labeur a demy sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mom nom ne s’aille resveillant,
Benissant vostre nom de louange immortelle.
Je seray sous la terre, et, fantosme sans os,
Par les ombres myreteux je prendray mon repos:
Vous serez au fouyer une vieille accroupie,
Regrettant mon amour et vostre fier desdain,
Vivez si m’em croyez, n’attendez a demain:
Cueillez des aujourd’huy les roses de la vie.
Here is a translation by Humbert Wolfe.
When you are old, at evening candle-lit
beside the fire bending to your wool,
read out my verse and murmur, "Ronsard writ
this praise for me when I was beautiful."
And not a maid but, at the sound of it,
though nodding at the stitch on broidered stool,
will start awake, and bless love’s benefit
whose long fidelities bring Time to school.
I shall be thin and ghost beneath the earth
by myrtle shade in quiet after pain,
but you, a crone, will crouch beside the hearth
mourning my love and all your proud disdain.
And since what comes tomorrow who can say?
Live, pluck the roses of the world today.
Jim
[This message has been edited by Jim Pitt (edited December 28, 2000).]
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