| Marot Ma mignonne, Je vous donne Le bon jour; Le séjour C’est prison. Guérison Recouvrez, Puis ouvrez Votre porte Et qu’on sorte Vitement, Car Clément Le vous mande. Va, friande De ta bouche, Qui se couche En danger Pour manger Confitures; Si tu dures Trop malade, Couleur fade Tu prendras, Et perdras L’embonpoint. Dieu te doint Santé bonne, Ma mignonne. | Hofstadter My sweet I bid you A good day; The stay Is prison. Health Recover, Then open Your door, And go out Quickly, For Clément Tells you to. Go, indulger Of thy mouth, Lying abed In danger, Off to eat Fruit preserves; If thou stay’st Too sick, Pale shade Thou wilt acquire, And wilt lose Thy plump form. God grant thee Good health, My sweet. | Monroe My delight, I invite you to smile; For awhile you¹ve been jailed. Find your failed health again. Open then the cruel door to explore right away, for I say you’ve no choice. Go, rejoice, since your tastes lay in waste while you’re ill; Have your fill, cakes devour! Ev'ry hour sickness wins, color thins from your face, to displace roundedness. May God bless you tonight, My delight. |
Hofstadter, in sending the translation challenge out to his friends and colleagues, identified the following eight structural features that deserve consideration:
- It is made up of 28 lines.
- Each line has 3 syllables.
- The stress falls on the last of these syllables.
- It is a series of rhyming couplets.
- The semantic couplets are out of phase with the rhyming couplets.
- After line 14 the formal "vous" is replaced by the more colloquial "tu".
- The last line echoes the first.
- The poet slips his own name into the poem.
