OF AMBOISE.

With zeal for your God; with love for your fellow man.
Follow the ineffable example of your divine master.
If you know like him how to carry all your desires
Toward the work of your father; and live on sighs,
So that he may look upon man and so that he may heal him,
Then, filling yourself with the spirit of justice,
No one will touch you without moving your faith,
And without making a vertu virtue, here used in the biblical sense of "power" or "healing strength" as in the Gospels go out from you."

Here, whether it was the power of my sweet hope;
Or whether these great destinies showed themselves in advance;
I seemed to foresee that after terrible scourges
Happier moments would follow for us.
I thought I saw wisdom seated on a throne,
Retracing in our days what Babylon saw,
When in the middle of a field, the voice of Ezekiel
Made all the dead of Israel revive and walk.
I thought I felt that finally this holy wisdom,
Accomplishing its divine promise for us,
Would return our treasures to us, snatched away by Babel;
That she would revive all our dried bones;
That man would be reborn; that the captive tribes,
Through him, would regain the banks of the true Jordan,
And that Jerusalem would see her children again.

"Yes, Alexis said to me, those times will take place,
When man will re-enter the promised land.
To the true God, by his arm, she will be submitted:
But announce to mortals that they will inhabit it
Only insofar as they cultivate it for their master."

These words are the last that Alexis made heard.
When I had praised the heavens, when I had blessed his ashes,