Rondeau

Fleas, stink, pigs, mold,
The gist of the Bohemian soul,
Bread and salted fish and cold.

Leeks, and cabbage three days old,
Smoked meat, as hard and black as coal;
Fleas, stink, pigs, mold.

Twenty eating from one bowl,
A bitter drink -it's beer, I'm told-
Bad sleep on a straw in some filthy hole,
Fleas, stink, pigs, mold,
The gist of the Bohemian soul,
Bread and salted fish and cold.

poem by Eustache Deschamps
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You who live

You who live now in this world
And which live sovereign in virtue,
It is to you death remembered?
Your fathers are in the deep pit
Eaten worms, without lance and ecu,
You who live now in this world
And which reign sovereign in virtue.

Warn there and carry out round life,
Because while living will be cold and chanu,
Because in the end will die pare and naked.
You who live now in this world
And which reign sovereign in virtue
It is to you death remembered?

poem by Eustache Deschamps
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Ballade 2

In Antwerp, Bruges, Ostend and Ghent
I used to order food with flair,
But in every inn to which I went
They always brought me, with my fare,
With every roast and mutton dish,
With boar, with rabbit, pigeon, bustard,
With fresh and with salt-water fish,
Always, never asking, mustard.

I ordered herring, said I'd like
Carp for supper at the bar,
And called for simple boiled pike,
And two large sole, when I ate at Spa.
I ordered green sauce when in Brussels;
The waiter stared and looked disgusted;
The bus boy brought in with my mussels
As always, never asking, mustard.

I couldn't eat or drink without it.
They add it to the water they

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poem by Eustache Deschamps
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Ballade adresse a Geoffrey Chaucer

O Socratès plains de philosophie,
Seneque en meurs, Auglius en pratique,
Ovides grans en ta poëtrie,
Briés en parler, saiges en rethorique . . .
Grant translateur, noble Geoffrey Chaucier.

O Socrates, filled with philosophy,
Seneca in morals, Aulus Gellius in practice,
Great Ovid of your poetry,
Brief in speech, wise in rhetoric,
Most high eagle, who by your science
Enlumined the realm of Æneas.
The Isle of giants, of Brut, who has
Sown the flowers and planted the rose bower
For those ignorant of French,
Great translator, noble Geoffrey Chaucer.

You are the god of earthly love in Albion,
And of the Rose - in the Angelic land,
Which, from the Saxoness Angelica, has flourished

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poem by Eustache Deschamps
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Ballade 1

The stag was very proud of his swiftness,
Of running ten miles in one breath,
And the wild boar was proud to be fierce,
And the sheep praised her woolly fleece,
And the horse its beauty, and the buck was proud
Of crossing the plain at a bound,
And the one proud of strength was the bull,
The ermine in having a furry skin;
And to them all he said from his shell:
'The snail will get to Easter just as soon.

What I see first are lions, leopards, bears,
Running the countryside, wolves and tigers
Under pursuit by greyhound and mastiff
And the shouts of men, so hated that if
They're caught each person will attack,
Because of the destruction of the flock;
They're thieves, treacherous and wicked,
And merciless, and for that detested.
Are they strong and fast? Good at a run?

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poem by Eustache Deschamps
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