A Channel Passage and Other Poems/A Roundel from Villon

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

ROUNDEL

From the French of Villon

 

Death, I would plead against thy wrong,
Who hast reft me of my love, my wife,
And art not satiate yet with strife,
But needs wilt hold me lingering long.
No strength since then has kept me strong:
But what could hurt thee in her life,
Death?

Twain we were, and our hearts one song,
One heart: if that be dead, thy knife
Hath cut me off alive from life,
Dead as the carver's figured throng,
Death!