Belle âme qui fus mon flambeau,
Reçois l'honneur qu'en ce tombeau
[Je suis obligé de]1 te rendre ;
Ce que je fais te sert de peu ;
Mais au moins tu vois en la cendre
[Comme j'en conserve]2 le feu.

About the headline (FAQ)

View original text (without footnotes)

Confirmed with Œuvres de Malherbe, volume 1, ed. by M. L. Lalanne, Paris: Hachette, 1862, page 272.

¹ Poulenc: "Le devoir m'oblige à"
² Poulenc: "Que j'en aime encore"

Text Authorship:

• by François de Malherbe (1555 - 1628), no title [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by Francis Poulenc (1899 - 1963), "Épitaphe", FP 55 (1930), published 1930 [ medium voice and piano ], Éd. Rouart, Lerolle [sung text checked 1 time]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

• DUT Dutch (Nederlands) (Sander Kobussen) , "Grafschrift op een tekst van Malherbe", copyright © 2019, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
• ENG English (Laura (Pranada) Sylvis) , "Epitaph on a text by Malherbe", copyright © 2004, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
• GER German (Deutsch) (Ingrid Schmithüsen) , "Grabinschrift", copyright © 2013, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 6
Word count: 38