Then Roland feels that his last hour has come
 Facing toward Spain he lies on a steep hill,
 While with one hand he beats upon his breast: 
 “Mea culpa, God! through force of thy miracles
 Pardon my sins, the great as well as small,
 That I have done from the hour I was born
 Down to this day that I have now attained.” 
 His right glove toward God he lifted up. 
 Angels from heaven descend on him.  Aoi. 
 Li quens Rollanz se jut desuz un pin
 Envers Espaigne en ad turnet sun vis
 De plusurs choses a remembrer li prist
 De tantes terres cume li bers cunquist
 De dulce France des humes de sun lign
 De Carlemagne sun seignur kil nurrit
 Ne poet muer men plurt e ne suspirt
 Mais lui meisme ne voelt metre en ubli
 Claimet sa culpe si priet deu mercit. 
 “Veire paterne ki unkes ne mentis
 Seint Lazarun de mort resurrexis
 E Daniel des liuns guaresis
 Guaris de mei l’anme de tuz perils
 Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie fis.”

Sun destre guant a deu en puroffrit
 E de sa main seinz Gabriel lad pris
 Desur sun braz teneit le chief enclin
 Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin. 
 Deus li tramist sun angle cherubin
 E Seint Michiel de la mer del peril
 Ensemble od els Seinz Gabriels i vint
 L’ anme del cunte portent en pareis.

Count Roland throws himself beneath a pine
 And toward Spain has turned his face away. 
 Of many things he called the memory back,
 Of many lands that he, the brave, had conquered,
 Of gentle France, the men of his lineage,
 Of Charlemagne his lord, who nurtured him;
 He cannot help but weep and sigh for these,
 But for himself will not forget to care;
 He cries his Culpe, he prays to God for grace. 
 “O God the Father who has never lied,
 Who raised up Saint Lazarus from death,
 And Daniel from the lions saved,
 Save my soul from all the perils
 For the sins that in my life I did!”

His right-hand glove to God he proffered;
 Saint Gabriel from his hand took it;
 Upon his arm he held his head inclined,
 Folding his hands he passed to his end. 
 God sent to him his angel cherubim
 And Saint Michael of the Sea in Peril,
 Together with them came Saint Gabriel. 
 The soul of the Count they bear to Paradise.

Our age has lost much of its ear for poetry, as it has its eye for colour and line, and its taste for war and worship, wine and women.  Not one man in a hundred thousand could now feel what the eleventh century felt in these verses of the “Chanson,” and there is no reason for trying to do so, but there is a certain use in trying for once to understand not so much the feeling as the meaning.  The naivete of the poetry is that of the society.  God the Father was the feudal seigneur, who raised Lazarus—­his baron or vassal—­from the grave, and freed Daniel, as an evidence of his power and loyalty; a seigneur who never lied, or was false to his word.