À l'enfant [English translation]

In the town of Careol lived a lord

Who, to his king, was entirely devoted

He had for a wife a magnificent woman

Of whose beauty, all men spoke highly

This woman brought into the world a daughter

Who filled the lord with happiness

Up until the wretched day, when the king

Fell instantly and deeply in love

With the lord's wife

But she refused herself to him,

She implored him:

Was she not married

To his most loyal subject?

But the king, obstinate,

Commanded his advisor

To find a trick

By which, one day, to possess her

To the child who saw

What it never ought to have

Who in this way lost its carelessness

To the child who saw only

In its life, one lone way out:

To quench its sorrows in the violence

Of sweet revenge

So the advisor, a magician moreover,

Developed the most terrible of tricks:

One night, when the lord left for battle,

The magician gave his appearance to the king

The castle doors opened to the king

And the wife, taking him for her husband,

Loved him in all innocence

But the child saw that he wasn't her father,

And so she screamed her suffering to the world

To the child who saw

What it never ought to have

Who in this way lost its carelessness

To the child who saw only

In its life, one lone way out:

To quench its sorrows in the violence

Of sweet revenge

That night, the lord died in battle

His wife never recovered from this abuse of authority

Uther Pendragon was the name of this king

And from this illegitimate union was born a son:

Arthur