Top 11 Pierre-Jean de Béranger Quotes

Gaily! gaily! close our ranks! Arm! Advance! Hope of France!
Gaily! gaily! close our ranks!
Onward! Onward! Gauls and Franks!

Each year his mighty armies marched forth in gallant show,
Their enemies were targets, their bullets they were tow.

Translation: And in the years he reigned; through all the country wide, There was no cause for weeping, save when the good man died.

Ce n'est que lorsqu'il expira
Que le peuple, qui l'enterra, pleura.

Adieu! 'tis love's last greeting, The parting hour is come!
And fast thy soul is fleeting To seek its starry home.

Translation: In spite of their hats being very ugly, Goddam! I love the English.

Quoique leurs chapeaux sont bien laids,
Goddam! j'aime les anglais.

Nos amis, les ennemis.

In Paris a queer little man you may see, A little man all in gray;
Rosy and round as an apple is he,
Content with the present whate'er it may be,
While from care and from cash he is equally free, And merry both night and day!
"Ma foi! I laugh at the world." says he,
"I laugh at the world, and the world laughs at me!"
What a gay little man in gray.

Ye Gods! but she is wondrous fair! For me her constant flame appears;
The garland she hath culled, I wear On brows bald since my thirty years.
Ye veils that deck my loved one rare, Fall, for the crowning triumph's nigh.
Ye Gods! but she is wondrous fair! And I, so plain a man am I!

Old age doth in sharp pains abound; We are belabored by the gout,
Our blindness is a dark profound, Our deafness each one laughs about.
Then reason's light with falling ray Doth but a trembling flicker cast.
Honor to age, ye children pay! Alas! my fifty years are past!