The Harvesters

Ah! I have made up my mind, my mother; tender mother!
If my work were to cease, you would be in tears.
I would see you suffer the affront of misery;
My fatigue has its sweetness...

As soon as the rosy dawn
Spreads the fresh morning air,
I hear the bee humming
Caressing the thyme flower.
The birds, with their chirping,
Announce serene days;
They fly from the grove,
To plunder the first grains.
The Gleaner is content
With the ears left in the fields;
Beneficent Nature
Takes care of all her children.

Rosine... I would like to call you Melincour;
It was the name of your unfortunate father,
Who, seemingly reuniting fortune & love,
Had for his first wife a foreign woman.

I was the only fruit of a union so dear.

But, you lost your mother upon receiving the day.

Ah! How I would have loved her!
But you replace her: you are in my heart,
And by casting aside the coldness of a stepmother,
It is through sentiment that you have formed me.

I never knew ambition.
This cottage was my inheritance.
To soften my situation,
Melincour took care not to borrow the language
Which leads indigence to seduction.
He wanted his hand to be the pledge of love.