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1874–1936

TRANSLATION FROM DU BELLAY

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Happy, who like Ulysses or that lord Who raped the fleece, returning full and sage, With usage and the world's wide reason stored, With his own kin can wait the end of age.

When shall I see, when shall I see, God knows! My little village smoke; or pass the door, The old dear door of that unhappy house That is to me a kingdom and much more?

Mightier to me the house my fathers made Than your audacious heads, O Halls of Rome! More than immortal marbles undecayed, The thin sad slates that cover up my home;

More than your Tiber is my Loire to me, Than Palatine my little Lyre there; And more than all the winds of all the sea The quiet kindness of the Angevin air.

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