C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Garret

By Pierre Jean de Béranger (1780–1857)

WITH pensive eyes the little room I view,

Where in my youth I weathered it so long,

With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,

And a light heart still breaking into song;

Making a mock of life, and all its cares,

Rich in the glory of my rising sun:

Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs,

In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

Yes; ’tis a garret—let him know’t who will—

There was my bed—full hard it was and small;

My table there—and I decipher still

Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall.

Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away,

Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun:

For you I pawned my watch how many a day,

In the brave days when I was twenty-one!

And see my little Jessy, first of all;

She comes with pouting lips and sparkling eyes:

Behold, how roguishly she pins her shawl

Across the narrow casement, curtain-wise:

Now by the bed her petticoat glides down,

And when did women look the worse in none?

I have heard since who paid for many a gown,

In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

One jolly evening, when my friends and I

Made happy music with our songs and cheers,

A shout of triumph mounted up thus high,

And distant cannon opened on our ears;

We rise,—we join in the triumphant strain,—

Napoleon conquers—Austerlitz is won—

Tyrants shall never tread us down again,

In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

Let us begone—the place is sad and strange—

How far, far off, these happy times appear!

All that I have to live I’d gladly change

For one such month as I have wasted here—

To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power,

From founts of hope that never will outrun,

And drink all life’s quintessence in an hour:

Give me the days when I was twenty-one.

- GENERAL INDEX - SONGS & LYRICS - QUICK INDEX - BIOGRAPHIES - READER’S DIGEST - STUDENT’S COURSE - PORTRAITS - BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD