Cease your tears, my book : it was not ordained
By fate that, while I am alive, you should be rich in glory ;
Before any man passes beyond the black river,
The honour due his work is never given to him.
 
Someone, astonished by my verse after a thousand years,
Will want to drink from my Loir, as from Permessus,
And seeing my homeland will hardly be able to believe
That from so small a place was such a poet born.
 
Take heart, my book: “The precious virtue
Of a man, while he lives, is always disliked;
After he is gone, everyone thinks him a god.
 
Rancour only harms those who are alive;
It has no power over the virtues of the dead,
And posterity renders honour without envy.”