Classic Poem

(Les Regrets de la belle bealmiere)

Methought I heard the mournful sigh
Of she who was the town's mistress,
Lamenting that her youth should die
And speaking thus in sore distress:
" Ah foul age, in your bitterness
And hate, why have you used me so?
What hinders me in my duress
Ending this life so useless now?

" Broken hast thou the spell so fair
That beauty once gave unto me;
Merchants and clerks and priests once were
My slaves, and all men born to see
Were mine, and paid gold royally
For that without which hearts must break,
For that which now, if offered free,
No thief in all the town would take.

" And many a man have I refused —
So little wisdom did I show —
For love of one black thief who used
My youth as bee the flowering bow.
Though, spite my wiles, I loved him so,
And gave him that which I had sold,
For love he paid me many a blow;
Yet well I know he loved my gold.

" Though many a blow and many a kick
He gave me, still my love held true;
Though he bound faggots stick by stick
Upon my back, one kiss would do
To wipe away the bruises blue
And my forgetfulness to win;
And how much am I fatter through
That rogue? whose pay was shame and sin!

" But he is dead this thirty years,
And I remain, by age brought low,
And when I think, alas! in tears
Of what was then and what is now,
And when my nakedness I show
And all my ruined change I see,
Aged, dried, and withered, none may know
The rage that fills the heart of me!

" Where now is gone my forehead white,
Those eyebrows arched, that golden hair,
Those eyes that once, so keen of sight,
Held all men by their gaze so fair;
The straight nose, great nor small, and where
Those little ears, that dimpled chin,
The fine complexion, pale yet clear,
The mouth just like a rose within?

" Small shoulders with the grace that dips,
The long arms and the lovely hands,
The little breasts, and full-fleshed hips
That once had strong men's arms for bands,
High, broad, and fair as fair uplands
The large reins?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

" The forehead wrinkled, hair turned grey,
The eyebrows vanished, eyes grown blind
That once with laughter's light were gay,
Now gone and never more to find;
Nose bent as if beneath some wind,
Ears hanging, mossed with hair unclean,
Life's colour now to Death's inclined,
Chin peaked, and lips like weeds from Seine.

" And so all human beauty ends:
The arms grown short, the hands grown thin,
Shoulders like two fair ruined friends,
The breasts like sacks all shrunken in,
The flanks that now no gaze could win;
That's best forgot.
The thighs that once were firm, like skin
O'er sausage-meat for stain and spot.

" So we regret the good old times,
And squatting round the fire sit we,
Old tripes, to watch the flame that climbs
And in the fire our past to see.
Like sticks to feed a fire we be,
A fire that soon is lit and done;
Yet had we beauty once — pardie! —
Which is the tale of many a one. "