Les Regrets/24

XXIII. 'They grant the wise scholar a degree '

Les Regrets ~ XXIV written by Joachim Du Bellay translated by A. S. Kline

XXV. 'If virtue, that’s born from immortal nature'

Les Regrets - XXIV. ‘Dans l’enfer de son corps mon esprit attaché’.

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XXIV

"In the hell of my body, my chained spirit"
 
In the hell of my body, my chained spirit,
(And that hell, Madame, has been my absence)
For four years and more, has done penance
For the old crimes with which it was sullied.
 
Now, the gods be thanked, you release it
From that painful hell, and by your presence,
Reduced to the first state of its divine essence,
It has discharged the weight of sin upon it.

Now captured by the grace your favour yields
It takes sweet rest in these Elysian Fields,
Nor would it leave the place where it grows well.

Then, Madame, send it not to Lethe, drinking,
Lest, doing so, it be fired with fresh longing,
To return once more into the body’s hell.

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