Careless I lived, and easily
(As nature bade) indulged each whim;
I wonder, then, Death thought of me
Who never thought of him.
J’ay vescu sans nul pensement,
Me laissant aller doucement
A la douce loy naturelle;
Et ne scaurois dire pourquoy
La Mort daigna penser à moy
Qui n’ay daigné penser en elle.
Me laissant aller doucement
A la douce loy naturelle;
Et ne scaurois dire pourquoy
La Mort daigna penser à moy
Qui n’ay daigné penser en elle.
Original text (French)
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Source, in full
His own Epitaph, version from E. Courbet’s edition of Regnier’s Works (Œuvres complètes, Paris, 1875), where in Note, p. 275, will be found a variant of the last three lines: / Et si m’estonne fort pourquoy, / La mort oza songer en moy / Qui ne songeay iamais en elle.
Notes from Wikiquote
Cf. the brief sepulchral record of Sextius Perpenna, composed some fifteen hundred years before (Jan Gruter, Inscriptiones Antiquæ, page 920, 9);—VIXI·QVEMADMODVM·VOLVI·QVARE·MORTVVS·SIM·NESCIO ("I lived as I liked, and why I am dead I don’t know"). Regnier lived a more than "easy" life, being at thirty already an old man, and dying quite worn out ten years later in 1613. Boileau, however, recognised his poetical gifts, saying of him, Dans son vieux style encore il y a des grâces nouvelles; as, e.g., in his satire of Les Grands Seigneurs. | W. F. H. King, Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 1172