I wish I was dead,
And lay deep in the grave.
I've a pain in my head,
I wish I was dead.
In a coffin of lead--
With the Wise and the Brave--
I wish I was dead,
And lay deep in the grave.

This passionate utterance immediately preceded, in the original text,
the following verses in which his buoyant spirits rise once more to the
surface:--

Thank God I'm alive
In the light of the Sun!
It's a quarter to five;
Thank God I'm alive!
Now the hum of the hive
Of the world has begun,
Thank God I'm alive
In the light of the Sun!

A more plaintive, in fact a positively wistful note, which is almost
incongruous amongst the definite and sharply defined moods of Jean
Francois, is struck in the sonnet of which only the first line has
reached us: "I wish I had a hundred thousand pounds." ("Voulentiers
serais pauvre avec dix mille escus.") But in nearly all his verse,
whether joyous as in the "Chant de vin et vie," or gloomy as in the
"Ballade des Treize Pendus," there is a curious recurrent aspiration