À ma fille [English translation]

I know that a day will come, for life commands it.

That day I fear, you will leave us.

I know that a day will come when sad and lonely,

Supporting your mother and dragging my feet

I will come back home, to a desert home.

I will come back home where you will not be.

You, you will see none of the things in my heart

Your eyes will be full of joy and happiness

I will have a grin you do not know

That seems to be a smile but that is not.

Keeping my pain quiet, taking your harm proudly

I will guide your feet whatever I may think or tell

Into the meditation of a peaceful church

To give you to the man you chose

Who will strip off the name that is ours

To give you an other I do not know.

I know that a day will come when you will reach the age

When you break the cages, having found your way.

I know that a day will come, years will have make you bloom

And the dawn of your life will rise somewhere else

And alone with your mother day and night,

Summer and winter we will get cold.

And he, who knows nothing of the trouble we went through,

He, who has done nothing to make your years grown up,

He, who will come to steal what I fear most

Our part of past, our part of happiness

This nameless and faceless stranger

Oh! How I hate him.

But if he makes you happy

I will have no angry thought toward him

And I will offer him my heart with your hand

I will do all of this knowing you love him

Just because I love you.

The day when he will come.