Classic Poem

Couplets.

What! in our songs your echoes take their part!
The good Mauritians! they are French at heart!
O'er waves, and tempests, and monsoons, is borne
Their voice to me, whence comes to us the morn
Of all the echoes that our ears may greet,
The farthest wafted seem to us most sweet!

My joyous warblings, then, of love and youth —
What! have they made so long a voyage, in sooth?
Far from your shores in turn their murmur flies,
To me returning when I'm old and wise
Of all the echoes that our ears may greet,
The farthest wafted seem to us most sweet!

They tell me, seated on the Ganges' strand,
Gay children of the Seine, an exiled band,
Have in my songs from trouble found relief —
So may my Muse to slumber lull your grief!
Of all the echoes that our ears may greet,
The farthest wafted seem to us most sweet!

And if more songs of mine should cross the sea,
Poor foolish swallows, let them welcome be!
As a good son the messenger will hail,
Who of a mother's welfare brings the tale
Of all the echoes that our ears may greet,
The farthest wafted seem to us most sweet!

Ye, to your loves should also songs indite;
Heaven will permit our voices to unite:
But aye in French, O brothers, sing — 'twere well,
That aye our echoes should responsive swell.
Of all the echoes that our ears may greet,
The farthest wafted seem to us most sweet!