You will live in a white-wash'd cottage,
You'll have a patch of garden too,
Full of cabbage, roses and lilacs...
But I shall not rest there with you!

I may peep thro' your tiny windows
At tables and at shiny chairs,
At cupboards and the Breton bedstead -
Alas! that another shares!

Ah, not for me, when flows the tide
In the long spring evenings next year
You'll sit waiting in wifely pride
With your knitting on the pier.

When the ocean is lash'd to wrath,
All a-down the fierce, rocky coast,
It is not to save me from death
That you'll invoke the Saintly host.

How will you think of me then?
As a picture time has effac'd?
A shadow by rough breezes chas'd?
I leave you now, my heart is sore,
The gentle night my sorrows will bless.
I drop these flow'rs outside your door;
O Marycinthe, find happiness!