Monique Morelli - Pierre de Ronsard - Sweetheart, let's go and see if the rose

Text: Pierre de Ronsard
Year: 1978
Original title: "Mignonne, allons voir si la rose"

Sweetheart*, let's go and see if the rose
Which had opened this morning
Its crimson dress under the sun,
Has not lost this vespers²,
the folds of its scarlet dress,
And its complexion alike to yours.

Alas! See how in such a short space (of time),
Sweetheart, she has right there
Alas, alas, let her beauties fall
Oh really cruel mother Nature,
As such a flower only lasts,
from the morning to the evening!

So if you believe me, sweetheart,
While your age blossoms,
In it's greenest novelty,
Pick up, pick up your youth:
Like to this flower, the old age
Will make your beauty tarnished

* Cute one
²Evening between dusk and the dark of the night
Mignarda, Luth duo version

Monique Morelli - Ronsard - When I see you

Original Title: "Quand je vous vois"
Text: Pierre de Ronsard
Year: 1978

When I see you, or when I think of you
Of a shiver all my heart quivers
My blood stirs and of a fertile thought
Another one grows, so sweet is the subject to me.

I tremble all of nerves and knees
Like the was in the fire, I distil myself
My reason falls and my strength useless
Leaves me cold breathless and without pulse.

I look like the dead, who is tumbled down the grave
So gaunt am I, dreadful and pale
Seeing my senses turn into death

And somehow I take pleasure in my embers.
Of an alike ill one and the other feel comfortable
I to die and you to kill me.

All poems written by Ronsard

Monique Morelli - Ronsard - To drink over the tender grass

Original Title: "Pour boire dessus l'herbe tendre"
Text: Pierre de Ronsard
Year: 1978

To drink over the tender grass
I want to lie down under a bay-tree
And want that Love, with a small blade
Or of flax or of hemp
Tucks up to the side
Her light dress
And half-naked, pour me wine.

The uncertain life of man
From day to day unfolds like
Onto the riverbanks rolls the waves
Then, after our final hour,
Nothing of us remains in the coffin
But a little ash from our bones

I do not wish, as is the custom,
For my tomb to be perfumed with incense,
Nor for scents to be poured over it,
But so long as I am alive
To wear perfume I feel like
And to crown myself with flowers,

Of myself, I want to make myself,
The hair to sastisfy my own self;
I do not want to live for anyone else
Fool the Pelican who hurts himself
For his likes, and crazy the one who lets himself
For his likes work in boredom

Corydon, go and summon my love.
Before that the small boat turned pale
Sends me to the eternal nights,
I want with full cup and with her
To take away the pain
Of my lamentable troubles.

All poems by Ronsard

Monique Morelli - Ronsard - Time is going away

Original Title: "Le Temps s'en va"
Text: Pierre de Ronsard
Year: 1978

Time is going away, time is going away, my Lady,
Alas! Time does not but we, we are going away,
And soon we will be stretched out under the blade
Time is going away, time is going away, my Lady,

I am sending you a bouquet, that my hand,
Just selected among those flowers in full bloom
Which if had I not picked them up during those vespers
Would have fallen to the ground tomorrow

Time is going away, time is going away my Lady,
Alas! Time does not but we, we are going away,
And soon will be stretched out under the blade
Time is going away, time is going away my Lady,

Let it be to you a sure example
That your beauties, even though they are blossomed
In a little bit of time, will be withered
And, like flowers, will perish all suddenly

Time is going away, time is going away my Lady,
Alas! Time does not but us, we are going away
And soon we will be stretched out under the blade
Time is going away, time is going away my Lady,

The original poem finishes with those two verses:
And those loves of which we talk about
When will be dead, no one would hear about them anymore


All poems written by Ronsard

Monique Morelli - Pierre de Ronsard - The drunkard's dream

This one always make me think of Bosch

Original Title: "Le rêve de l'ivrogne"
Text: Pierre de Ronsard
Year: 1978

I see here, I see there
I see thousand horned beasts
Thousand kids in the streets
From one comes out a big bull
On the other hops a kid²
One has the horns of a satyr
And from the belly of the other pulls
a thousand revolutions crocodile
I see towns and towers
I see some red and some green
Look at them there! I see them covered
with sweets and candied peas
I see some are dead, I see some are alive
I see some, look at them! that look like
the wheats that tremble under the wind

I catch sight of a camp of armed dwarves
I see some that are not developed
Truncated of thighs and legs
And if they have the eyes burning
At the hollow of the stomach are sitting
I see fifty of them, I see six of them
that are bellyless, and if they have a head
Appalling with a big crest

Here comes two clouds all full
with Moors that have no hands
Nor body and have the faces
alike to those of wild cats
Ones carry goats feet,
And the others only have on lipe
that alone paddles and inside
they have no jaw nor teeth

One is going late, the other gallops
One rushes foward onto the croup
Of an unbridled centaur
And the other guided by a giant
Wearing a bell on his forehead
Through the air rides a genette
One on his back loads a calf
The other in his hand holds a hammer
One with a sullen look
Arms his fist with a felling axe
One carries a javelin, the other a trident
And the other a brand all glowing

Some are riding cranes
And the others turtles
Going to hunt with the gods
I see the good Father happy
that is turning into hundred news
I see some that have no brain
And make a non alike heap
So to want to beat the sun
And to enclose it in the cave
Of St Patrick or of Averne
I see his sister defending him
I see the whole sky splitting
And the earth become cracked
And the charos threatening them

I see hundred thousand young satyres
Having young goats dewclaws
Scaring thousand naiads
I see the dryads dance
among the forests stamping on their feet,
And now combing their hair again
Then go swimming in the fountains
There! Those clouds full of hail
Predict to me that Jupiter
Is vexed by me

Here comes the lightning
Do you hear doing battle
The belly of a cloud?
I saw, I saw ! I saw the fire,
I saw the thunderstorm and the thunder
Smashes me against the earth, all dead

²young goat


All poems written by Ronsard

Monique Morelli - Ronsard - I love you

Original Title: "Je vous aime"
Year: 1978

If that's what being in love is, Madam, and during the day and during the night,
to dream, to imagine, to think of the means to please you,
to forget all things and not wanting to do anything else,
but to adore and to serve the beauty who harms me:

I love you!
I love you!
I love you!

If that's what being in love is, to follow an happiness that is fleeing me,
to lose myself and to be solitary,
To suffer lots of harm, to fear a lot and to remain quiet,
to weep, cry for mercy and see myself rejected as a result:

I love you!
I love you!
I love you!

If that's what being in love is, to live more in you than in myself,
to hide with a joyful forehead an extreme languor,
to feel deep in the soul an uneven combat,
If that's how it's to love: furious, I love you:

I love you!
I love you!
I love you!

All poems written by Ronsard