dots-menu
×
Home  »  library  »  poem  »  From ‘The Gipsies’

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

From ‘The Gipsies’

By Pierre Jean de Béranger (1780–1857)

(Les Bohémiens)

TO see is to have. Come, hurry anew!

Life on the wing

Is a rapturous thing.

To see is to have. Come, hurry anew!

For to see the world is to conquer it too.

*****

So naught do we own, from pride left free,

From statutes vain,

From heavy chain;

So naught do we own, from pride left free,—

Cradle nor house nor coffin have we.

But credit our jollity none the less,

Noble or priest, or

Servant or master;

But credit our jollity none the less,—

Liberty always means happiness.