With the influence of the myth and poetry of the world of classical Greek and Rome prominent in the first lines, a famous sixteenth-century French poet writes in Rome of his longing for his ancestral home near the Loire.
Heureux qui comme Ulysse
by Du Bellay
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Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage,
Ou comme cestuy-là qui conquit la toison,
Et puis est retourné, plein d’usage et raison,
Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son âge !
Quand reverrai-je, hélas, de mon petit village
Fumer la cheminée, et en quelle saison
Reverrai-je le clos de ma pauvre maison,
Qui m’est une province, et beaucoup davantage ?
Plus me plaît le séjour qu’ont bâti mes aïeux,
Que des palais Romains le front audacieux,
Plus que le marbre dur me plaît l’ardoise fine :
Plus mon Loire gaulois, que le Tibre latin,
Plus mon petit Liré, que le mont Palatin,
Et plus que l’air marin la douceur Angevine.
Happy, who like Ulysses has ended travels well,
Or like the man that won the golden fleece,
And, full of worldly wisdom and experience, returned
To live among relations the remainder of his age!
When will I see, alas, my hamlet’s chimneys smoke,
In what season see again my lowly house’s vines,
Which are to me a province, and far more?
More to me is the home my own forefathers built
Than Roman palaces’ bombastic fronts;
More the slender roof-slate than the marble hard;
More my gallic Loire than Tiber’s Latin stream,
More my little Liré than the Palatine,
And more than ocean air the sweetness of Anjou!