Ronsard’s Ode to His Mistress

By Scott Horton

Peter Paul Rubens, The Union of Earth and Water (1619)

Mignonne, allons voir si la rose

Qui ce matin avoit desclose

Sa robe de pourpre au Soleil,

A point perdu ceste vesprée

Les plis de sa robe pourprée,

Et son teint au vostre pareil.

Las! voyez comme en peu d’espace,

Mignonne, elle a dessus la place

Las! las ses beautez laissé cheoir!

Ô vrayment marastre Nature,

Puis qu’une telle fleur ne dure

Que du matin jusques au soir!

Donc, si vous me croyez, mignonne,

Tandis que vostre âge fleuronne

En sa plus verte nouveauté,

Cueillez, cueillez vostre jeunesse:

Comme à ceste fleur la vieillesse

Fera ternir vostre beauté.

See, Mignonne, hath not the Rose,

That this morning did unclose

Her purple mantle to the light,

Lost, before the day be dead,

The glory of her raiment red,

Her colour, bright as yours is bright?

Ah, Mignonne, in how few hours,

The petals of her purple flowers

All have faded, fallen, died;

Sad Nature, mother ruinous,

That seest thy fair child perish thus

‘Twixt matin song and even tide.

Hear me, my darling, speaking sooth,

Gather the fleet flower of your youth,

Take ye your pleasure at the best;

Be merry ere your beauty flit,

For length of days will tarnish it

Like roses that were loveliest.

–Pierre de Ronsard, A sa Maistresse first published in: Les Odes, xvii (1550) in Œuvres complètes vol. 1, pp. 419-20 (Pléiade ed. 1950)