Pierre-Jean de Béranger Quotes

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

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Nos amis, les ennemis.

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!