Pierre Jean de Beranger Poems

Wherefore these flowers? floral applause?
Ah, no, these blossoms came to say
That I am growing old, because
...

Rap! rap!--Is that my lass--
Rap! rap!--is rapping there?
It is Fortune. Let her pass!
I'll not open the door to her
...

What! whilst I'm well, beforehand you design,
At vast expense, for me to build a shrine?
...

In the midst of our laughter and singing,
'Mid the clink of our glasses so gay,
What gad-fly is over us winging,
...

Here in this gutter let me die:
Weary and sick and old, I've done.
'He's drunk,' will say the passers-by:
...

With pensive eyes the little room I view,
Where in my youth I weathered it so long,
With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,
...

Ay, many a day the straw-thatched cot
Shall echo with his glory!
The humblest shed, these fifty years,
...

Let's learn to temper our desires,
Not harshly to constrain;
And since excess makes pleasure less,
...

To see is to have. Come, hurry anew!
Life on the wing
Is a rapturous thing.
...