Far from the wild countryside
Where shines my happy morning,
Tender shrub of the mountain,
Transplanted into distant soil,
I feel that my sap is dry,
And I lift to the sky
My head, dying and withered.
Ah! return my root to the paternal rock!

Henceforth subjected to the storm,
The protective shelter of our mountains
Will no longer defend my foliage
Against the winds and their fury.
I want to deliver my destiny
To your breath, just as fatal.
But of my abandoned leaf
Bring the remains to the paternal rock!

Thus Mandel, far from the shore
Where flowed his first days,
Sighed a plaintive love song
On the lyre of the troubadours.
Because the regret of his homeland
Slowly consumed Mandel,
Seeing his sad life run
Far from the old tower and the paternal roof.

His heart asked the valley
Where the Isère on its winding course
Bathes the isolated hill,
Theater of his first games.
But, vain desires of his tenderness,
The wrath of cruel destiny
Chained his lively youth
Far from the old tower and the paternal roof.

He remembered the chapel
Which raises itself on a rock
In the woods showing its turret
And its solitary bell tower.
There stuttered his tender childhood,
When he offered to the Eternal God
The simple wishes of his innocence
For all that he loved under the paternal roof.
Thinking of abandoned paths
Where that gallant of such great renown,
Bayard, in his young years,
Loved to put on the spurs.
He said: “[In] the somber night
The old ruins of the old castle
Did not hear my steps in the darkness;
Because I was exiled far from the paternal roof.”

Thus sometimes his reverie
Inspired his soft accents; 
But often his touched soul 
On the tears hung the songs.
When by degrees weak and trembling
The voice of Mandel extinguished itself
Like in evening the dying glow
Of the pale ray on the paternal roof.