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“But where are the snows of yesteryear?” This line is probably the most famous in all of French poetry. It comes from the Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past, which Villon set into his Testament around 1461. In three stanzas, the poet lists admirable women of antiquity, legend and history, then asks, each time, where they have gone. The

Villon is known for his confessions about his own poverty, his irony and his regrets. The Ballad against the Enemies of France shows another side of the poet: a man who steps outside himself to curse, line after line, anyone who would harm the kingdom. Three stanzas, an envoi, a refrain that falls like a blade, and a parade of

He killed a priest, burgled a college, came within a rope’s length of the gallows, then vanished without trace at thirty-one. François Villon is also the greatest French poet of the Middle Ages, the one who brought into the language the ache of passing time and the voice of a man alone before his own death. We know this life