From the French. Consolation

To M. Duperrier, Gentleman of Aix in Provence, on the Death of His Daughter
By François de Malherbe

WILL then, Duperrier, thy sorrow be eternal?

And shall the sad discourse

Whispered within thy heart, by tenderness paternal,

Only augment its force?

Thy daughter’s mournful fate, into the tomb descending

By death’s frequented ways,

Has it become to thee a labyrinth never ending,

Where thy lost reason strays?

I know the charms that made her youth a benediction:

Nor should I be content,

As a censorious friend, to solace thine affliction

By her disparagement.

But she was of the world, which fairest things exposes

To fates the most forlorn;

A rose, she too hath lived as long as live the roses,

The space of one brief morn.

*****

Death has his rigorous laws, unparalleled, unfeeling;

All prayers to him are vain;

Cruel, he stops his ears, and, deaf to our appealing,

He leaves us to complain.

The poor man in his hut, with only thatch for cover,

Unto these laws must bend;

The sentinel that guards the barriers of the Louvre

Cannot our kings defend.

To murmur against death, in petulant defiance,

Is never for the best;

To will what God doth will, that is the only science

That gives us any rest.