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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wine, Women, and Song, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wine, Women, and Song
+ Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse
+
+Author: Various
+
+Translator: John Addington Symonds
+
+Release Date: March 24, 2006 [EBook #18044]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINE, WOMEN, AND SONG ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Sankar Viswanathan, and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ WINE, WOMEN, AND SONG
+
+
+ "Wer liebt nicht Weib Wein and Gesang
+ Der bleibt ein Narr sein Lebenslang."
+
+ --_Martin Luther._
+
+
+ _MEDIÆVAL LATIN STUDENTS' SONGS_
+
+ Now First Translated into English Verse
+
+ WITH AN ESSAY
+
+
+
+ BY
+
+ JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
+
+
+
+
+ London
+
+ CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY
+
+ 1884
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON._
+
+
+_Dear Louis,_
+
+_To you, in memory of past symposia, when wit (your wit) flowed freer
+than our old Forzato, I dedicate this little book, my pastime through
+three anxious months._
+
+_Yours,_
+
+_JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS_
+
+_Villa Emily, San Remo,_
+
+_May 1884._
+
+
+
+
+Wine, Women, and Song.
+
+I.
+
+
+When we try to picture to ourselves the intellectual and moral state
+of Europe in the Middle Ages, some fixed and almost stereotyped ideas
+immediately suggest themselves. We think of the nations immersed in a
+gross mental lethargy; passively witnessing the gradual extinction of
+arts and sciences which Greece and Rome had splendidly inaugurated;
+allowing libraries and monuments of antique civilisation to crumble
+into dust; while they trembled under a dull and brooding terror of
+coming judgment, shrank from natural enjoyment as from deadly sin, or
+yielded themselves with brutal eagerness to the satisfaction of vulgar
+appetites. Preoccupation with the other world in this long period
+weakens man's hold upon the things that make his life desirable.
+Philosophy is sunk in the slough of ignorant, perversely subtle
+disputation upon subjects destitute of actuality. Theological
+fanaticism has extinguished liberal studies and the gropings of the
+reason after truth in positive experience. Society lies prostrate
+under the heel of tyrannous orthodoxy. We discern men in masses,
+aggregations, classes, guilds--everywhere the genus and the species of
+humanity, rarely and by luminous exception individuals and persons.
+Universal ideals of Church and Empire clog and confuse the nascent
+nationalities. Prolonged habits, of extra-mundane contemplation,
+combined with the decay of real knowledge, volatilise the thoughts and
+aspirations of the best and wisest into dreamy unrealities, giving a
+false air of mysticism to love, shrouding art in allegory, reducing
+the interpretation of texts to an exercise of idle ingenuity, and the
+study of Nature (in Bestiaries, Lapidaries, and the like) to an insane
+system of grotesque and pious quibbling. The conception of man's fall
+and of the incurable badness of this world bears poisonous fruit of
+cynicism and asceticism, that twofold bitter almond, hidden in the
+harsh monastic shell. The devil has become God upon this earth, and
+God's eternal jailer in the next world. Nature is regarded with
+suspicion and aversion; the flesh, with shame and loathing, broken by
+spasmodic outbursts of lawless self-indulgence. For human life there
+is one formula:--
+
+ "Of what is't fools make such vain keeping?
+ Sin their conception, their birth weeping,
+ Their life a general mist of error,
+ Their death a hideous storm of terror."
+
+The contempt of the world is the chief theme of edification. A charnel
+filled with festering corpses, snakes, and worms points the preacher's
+moral. Before the eyes of all, in terror-stricken vision or in
+nightmares of uneasy conscience, leap the inextinguishable flames of
+hell. Salvation, meanwhile, is being sought through amulets, relics,
+pilgrimages to holy places, fetishes of divers sorts and different
+degrees of potency. The faculties of the heart and head, defrauded of
+wholesome sustenance, have recourse to delirious debauches of the
+fancy, dreams of magic, compacts with the evil one, insanities of
+desire, ineptitudes of discipline. Sexual passion, ignoring the true
+place of woman in society, treats her on the one hand like a servile
+instrument, on the other exalts her to sainthood or execrates her as
+the chief impediment to holiness. Common sense, sanity of judgment,
+acceptance of things as they are, resolution to ameliorate the evils
+and to utilise the goods of life, seem everywhere deficient. Men are
+obstinate in misconception of their proper aims, wasting their
+energies upon shadows instead of holding fast by realities, waiting
+for a future whereof they know nothing, in lieu of mastering and
+economising the present. The largest and most serious undertakings of
+united Europe in this period--the Crusades--are based upon a radical
+mistake. "Why seek ye the living among the dead? Behold, He is not
+here, but risen!" With these words ringing in their ears, the nations
+flock to Palestine and pour their blood forth for an empty sepulchre.
+The one Emperor who attains the object of Christendom by rational
+means is excommunicated for his success. Frederick II. returns from
+the Holy Land a ruined man because he made a compact useful to his
+Christian subjects with the Chief of Islam.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Such are some of the stereotyped ideas which crowd our mind when we
+reflect upon the Middle Ages. They are certainly one-sided. Drawn for
+the most part from the study of monastic literature, exaggerated by
+that reaction against medievalism which the Renaissance initiated,
+they must be regarded as inadequate to represent the whole truth. At
+no one period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the close of
+the thirteenth century was the mental atmosphere of Europe so
+unnaturally clouded. Yet there is sufficient substance in them to
+justify their formulation. The earlier Middle Ages did, in fact,
+extinguish antique civility. The later Middle Ages did create, to use
+a phrase of Michelet, an army of dunces for the maintenance of
+orthodoxy. The intellect and the conscience became used to moving
+paralytically among visions, dreams, and mystic terrors, weighed down
+with torpor, abusing virile faculties for the suppression of truth and
+the perpetuation of revered error.
+
+It is, therefore, with a sense of surprise, with something like a
+shock to preconceived opinions, that we first become acquainted with
+the medieval literature which it is my object in the present treatise
+to make better known to English readers. That so bold, so fresh, so
+natural, so pagan a view of human life as the Latin songs of the
+Wandering Students exhibit, should have found clear and artistic
+utterance in the epoch of the Crusades, is indeed enough to bid us
+pause and reconsider the justice of our stereotyped ideas about that
+period. This literature makes it manifest that the ineradicable
+appetites and natural instincts of men and women were no less vigorous
+in fact, though less articulate and self-assertive, than they had been
+in the age of Greece and Rome, and than they afterwards displayed
+themselves in what is known as the Renaissance.
+
+With something of the same kind we have long been familiar in the
+Troubadour poetry of Provence. But Provençal literature has a strong
+chivalrous tincture, and every one is aware with what relentless fury
+the civilisation which produced it was stamped out by the Church. The
+literature of the Wandering Students, on the other hand, owes nothing
+to chivalry, and emanates from a class which formed a subordinate part
+of the ecclesiastical militia. It is almost vulgar in its presentment
+of common human impulses; it bears the mark of the proletariate,
+though adorned with flourishes betokening the neighbourhood of Church
+and University.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+Much has recently been written upon the subject of an abortive
+Renaissance within the Middle Ages. The centre of it was France, and its
+period of brilliancy may be roughly defined as the middle and end of
+the twelfth century. Much, again, has been said about the religious
+movement in England, which spread to Eastern Europe, and anticipated the
+Reformation by two centuries before the date of Luther. The songs of the
+Wandering Students, composed for the most part in the twelfth century,
+illustrate both of these early efforts after self-emancipation. Uttering
+the unrestrained emotions of men attached by a slender tie to the
+dominant clerical class and diffused over all countries, they bring us
+face to face with a body of opinion which finds in studied chronicle or
+laboured dissertation of the period no echo. On the one side, they
+express that delight in life and physical enjoyment which was a main
+characteristic of the Renaissance; on the other, they proclaim that
+revolt against the corruption of Papal Rome which was the motive-force
+of the Reformation.
+
+Our knowledge of this poetry is derived from two chief sources. One is
+a MS. of the thirteenth century, which was long preserved in the
+monastery of Benedictbeuern in Upper Bavaria, and is now at Munich.
+Richly illuminated with rare and curious illustrations of contemporary
+manners, it seems to have been compiled for the use of some
+ecclesiastical prince. This fine codex was edited in 1847 at
+Stuttgart. The title of the publication is _Carmina Burana_, and under
+that designation I shall refer to it. The other is a Harleian MS.,
+written before 1264, which Mr. Thomas Wright collated with other
+English MSS., and published in 1841 under the name of _Latin Poems
+commonly attributed to Walter Mapes_.
+
+These two sources have to some extent a common stock of poems, which
+proves the wide diffusion of the songs in question before the date
+assignable to the earlier of the two MS. authorities. But while this
+is so, it must be observed that the _Carmina Burana_ are richer in
+compositions which form a prelude to the Renaissance; the English
+collections, on the other hand, contain a larger number of serious and
+satirical pieces anticipating the Reformation.
+
+Another important set of documents for the study of the subject are
+the three large works of Edelstand du Méril upon popular Latin poetry;
+while the stores at our disposal have been otherwise augmented by
+occasional publications of German and English scholars, bringing to
+light numerous scattered specimens of a like description. Of late it
+has been the fashion in Germany to multiply anthologies of medieval
+student-songs, intended for companion volumes to the _Commersbuch_.
+Among these, one entitled _Gaudeamus_ (Teubner, 2d edition, 1879)
+deserves honourable mention.
+
+It is my purpose to give a short account of what is known about the
+authors of these verses, to analyse the general characteristics of
+their art, and to illustrate the theme by copious translations. So far
+as I am aware, the songs of Wandering Students offer almost absolutely
+untrodden ground to the English translator; and this fact may be
+pleaded in excuse for the large number which I have laid under
+contribution.
+
+In carrying out my plan, I shall confine myself principally, but not
+strictly, to the _Carmina Burana_. I wish to keep in view the
+anticipation of the Renaissance rather than to dwell upon those
+elements which indicate an early desire for ecclesiastical reform.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+We have reason to conjecture that the Romans, even during the
+classical period of their literature, used accentual rhythms for
+popular poetry, while quantitative metres formed upon Greek models
+were the artificial modes employed by cultivated writers. However this
+may be, there is no doubt that, together with the decline of antique
+civilisation, accent and rhythm began to displace quantity and metre
+in Latin versification. Quantitative measures, like the Sapphic and
+Hexameter, were composed accentually. The services and music of the
+Church introduced new systems of prosody. Rhymes, both single and
+double, were added to the verse; and the extraordinary flexibility of
+medieval Latin--that sonorous instrument of varied rhetoric used by
+Augustine in the prose of the _Confessions_, and gifted with poetic
+inspiration in such hymns as the _Dies Irae_ or the _Stabat
+Mater_--rendered this new vehicle of literary utterance adequate to
+all the tasks imposed on it by piety and metaphysic. The language of
+the _Confessions_ and the _Dies Irae_ is not, in fact, a decadent form
+of Cicero's prose or Virgil's verse, but a development of the Roman
+speech in accordance with the new conditions introduced by
+Christianity. It remained comparatively sterile in the department of
+prose composition, but it attained to high qualities of art in the
+verse and rhythms of men like Thomas of Celano, Thomas of Aquino, Adam
+of St. Victor, Bernard of Morlais, and Bernard of Clairvaux. At the
+same time, classical Latin literature continued to be languidly
+studied in the cloisters and the schools of grammar. The metres of the
+ancients were practised with uncouth and patient assiduity, strenuous
+efforts being made to keep alive an art which was no longer rightly
+understood. Rhyme invaded the hexameter, and the best verses of the
+medieval period in that measure were leonine.
+
+The hymns of the Church and the secular songs composed for music in
+this base Latin took a great variety of rhythmic forms. It is clear
+that vocal melody controlled their movement; and one fixed element in
+all these compositions was rhyme--rhyme often intricate and complex
+beyond hope of imitation in our language. Elision came to be
+disregarded; and even the accentual values, which may at first have
+formed a substitute for quantity, yielded to musical notation. The
+epithet of popular belongs to these songs in a very real sense, since
+they were intended for the people's use, and sprang from popular
+emotion. Poems of this class were technically known as _moduli_--a
+name which points significantly to the importance of music in their
+structure. Imitations of Ovid's elegiacs or of Virgil's hexameters
+obtained the name of _versus_. Thus Walter of Lille, the author of a
+regular epic poem on Alexander, one of the best medieval writers of
+_versus_, celebrates his skill in the other department of popular
+poetry thus--
+
+ "Perstrepuit _modulis_ Gallia tota meis."
+ (All France rang with my songs.)
+
+We might compare the _versus_ of the Middle Ages with the stiff
+sculptures on a Romanesque font, lifelessly reminiscent of decadent
+classical art; while the _moduli_, in their freshness, elasticity, and
+vigour of invention, resemble the floral scrolls, foliated cusps, and
+grotesque basreliefs of Gothic or Lombard architecture.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+Even in the half-light of what used to be called emphatically the Dark
+Ages, there pierce gleams which may be reflections from the past
+evening of paganism, or may intimate the earliest dawn of modern
+times. One of these is a song, partly popular, partly scholastic,
+addressed to a beautiful boy.[1] It begins thus--
+
+ "O admirabile veneris idolum"--
+
+and continues in this strain, upon the same rhythm, blending
+reminiscences of classical mythology and medieval metaphysic, and
+winding up with a reference to the Horatian _Vitas hinnuleo me similis
+Chloe_. This poem was composed in the seventh century, probably at
+Verona, for mention is made in it of the river Adige. The metre can
+perhaps be regarded as a barbarous treatment of the long Asclepiad;
+but each line seems to work out into two bars, divided by a marked
+rest, with two accents to each bar, and shows by what sort of
+transition the modern French Alexandrine may have been developed.
+
+The oddly archaic phraseology of this love-song rendered it unfit for
+translation; but I have tried my hand at a kind of hymn in praise of
+Rome, which is written in the same peculiar rhythm:[2]--
+
+ "O Rome illustrious, of the world emperess!
+ Over all cities thou queen in thy goodliness!
+ Red with the roseate blood of the martyrs, and
+ White with the lilies of virgins at God's right hand!
+ Welcome we sing to thee; ever we bring to thee
+ Blessings, and pay to thee praise for eternity.
+
+ "Peter, thou praepotent warder of Paradise,
+ Hear thou with mildness the prayer of thy votaries;
+ When thou art seated to judge the twelve tribes, O then
+ Show thyself merciful; be thou benign to men;
+ And when we call to thee now in the world's distress,
+ Take thou our suffrages, master, with gentleness.
+
+ "Paul, to our litanies lend an indulgent ear,
+ Who the philosophers vanquished with zeal severe:
+ Thou that art steward now in the Lord's heavenly house,
+ Give us to taste of the meat of grace bounteous;
+ So that the wisdom which filled thee and nourished thee
+ May be our sustenance through the truths taught by thee."
+
+A curious secular piece of the tenth century deserves more than
+passing mention. It shows how wine, women, and song, even in an age
+which is supposed to have trembled for the coming destruction of the
+world, still formed the attraction of some natures. What is more,
+there is a certain modern, as distinguished from classical, tone of
+tenderness in the sentiment. It is the invitation of a young man to
+his mistress, bidding her to a little supper in his rooms:[3]--
+
+ "Come therefore now, my gentle fere,
+ Whom as my heart I hold full dear;
+ Enter my little room, which is
+ Adorned with quaintest rarities:
+ There are the seats with cushions spread,
+ The roof with curtains overhead;
+ The house with flowers of sweetest scent
+ And scattered herbs is redolent:
+ A table there is deftly dight
+ With meats and drinks of rare delight;
+ There too the wine flows, sparkling, free;
+ And all, my love, to pleasure thee.
+ There sound enchanting symphonies;
+ The clear high notes of flutes arise;
+ A singing girl and artful boy
+ Are chanting for thee strains of joy;
+ He touches with his quill the wire,
+ She tunes her note unto the lyre:
+ The servants carry to and fro
+ Dishes and cups of ruddy glow;
+ But these delights, I will confess,
+ Than pleasant converse charm me less;
+ Nor is the feast so sweet to me
+ As dear familiarity.
+
+ "Then come now, sister of my heart,
+ That dearer than all others art,
+ Unto mine eyes thou shining sun,
+ Soul of my soul, thou only one!
+ I dwelt alone in the wild woods,
+ And loved all secret solitudes;
+ Oft would I fly from tumults far,
+ And shunned where crowds of people are.
+ O dearest, do not longer stay!
+ Seek we to live and love to-day!
+ I cannot live without thee, sweet!
+ Time bids us now our love complete.
+ Why should we then defer, my own,
+ What must be done or late or soon?
+ Do quickly what thou canst not shun!
+ I have no hesitation."
+
+From Du Méril's collections further specimens of thoroughly secular
+poetry might be culled. Such is the panegyric of the nightingale,
+which contains the following impassioned lines:[4]--
+
+ "Implet silvas atque cuncta modulis arbustula,
+ Gloriosa valde facta veris prae laetitia;
+ Volitando scandit alta arborum cacumina,
+ Ac festiva satis gliscit sibilare carmina."
+
+Such are the sapphics on the spring, which, though they date from the
+seventh century, have a truly modern sentiment of Nature. Such, too,
+is the medieval legend of the Snow-Child, treated comically in
+burlesque Latin verse, and meant to be sung to a German tune of
+love--
+
+_Modus Liebinc_. To the same category may be referred the horrible, but
+singularly striking, series of Latin poems edited from a MS. at Berne,
+which set forth the miseries of monastic life with realistic passion
+bordering upon delirium, under titles like the following--_Dissuasio
+Concubitûs in in Uno tantum Sexu_, or _De Monachi Cruciata_.[5]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: Du Méril, _Poésies Populaires Latines Antérieures au
+Deuxième: Siècle_, p. 240.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Du Méril, _op. cit._, p. 239.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Du Méril, _Poésies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age_, p.
+196.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Du Méril, _Poésies Pop. Lat. Ant._, pp. 278, 241, 275.]
+
+[Footnote 5: These extraordinary compositions will be found on pp.
+174-182 of a closely-printed book entitled _Carmina Med. Aev. Max.
+Part. Inedita. Ed. H. Hagenus. Bernae. Ap. G. Frobenium_. MDCCCLXXVII.
+The editor, so far as I can discover, gives but scant indication of
+the poet who lurks, with so much style and so terrible emotions, under
+the veil of Cod. Bern., 702 s. Any student who desires to cut into the
+core of cloister life should read cvii. pp. 178-182, of this little
+book.]
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+There is little need to dwell upon these crepuscular stirrings of
+popular Latin poetry in the earlier Middle Ages. To indicate their
+existence was necessary; for they serve to link by a dim and fragile
+thread of evolution the decadent art of the base Empire with the
+renascence of paganism attempted in the twelfth century, and thus to
+connect that dawn of modern feeling with the orient splendours of the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy.
+
+The first point to notice is the dominance of music in this verse, and
+the subjugation of the classic metres to its influence. A deeply
+significant transition has been effected from the _versus_ to the
+_modulus_ by the substitution of accent for quantity, and by the value
+given to purely melodic cadences. A long syllable and a short
+syllable have almost equal weight in this prosody, for the musical
+tone can be prolonged or shortened upon either. So now the
+_cantilena_, rather than the _metron_, rules the flow of verse; but,
+at the same time, antique forms are still conventionally used, though
+violated in the using. In other words, the modern metres of the modern
+European races--the Italian Hendecasyllable, the French Alexandrine,
+the English Iambic and Trochaic rhythms--have been indicated; and a
+moment has been prepared when these measures shall tune themselves by
+means of emphasis and accent to song, before they take their place as
+literary schemes appealing to the ear in rhetoric. This phase, whereby
+the metres of antiquity pass into the rhythms of the modern races,
+implies the use of medieval Latin, still not unmindful of classic art,
+but governed now by music often of Teutonic origin, and further
+modified by affinities of prosody imported from Teutonic sources.
+
+The next point to note is that, in this process of transition, popular
+ecclesiastical poetry takes precedence of secular. The great rhyming
+structures of the Middle Ages, which exercised so wide an influence
+over early European literature, were invented for the service of the
+Church--voluminous systems of recurrent double rhymes, intricate
+rhythms moulded upon tunes for chanting, solid melodic fabrics, which,
+having once been formed, were used for lighter efforts of the fancy,
+or lent their ponderous effects to parody. Thus, in the first half of
+the centuries which intervene between the extinction of the genuine
+Roman Empire and the year 1300, ecclesiastical poetry took the lead in
+creating and popularising new established types of verse, and in
+rendering the spoken Latin pliable for various purposes of art.
+
+A third point worthy of attention is, that a certain breath of
+paganism, wafting perfumes from the old mythology, whispering of gods
+in exile, encouraging men to accept their life on earth with genial
+enjoyment, was never wholly absent during the darkest periods of the
+Middle Ages. This inspiration uttered itself in Latin; for we have
+little reason to believe that the modern languages had yet attained
+plasticity enough for the expression of that specific note which
+belongs to the Renaissance--the note of humanity conscious of its
+Græco-Roman pagan past. This Latin, meanwhile, which it employed was
+fabricated by the Church and used by men of learning.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+The songs of the Wandering Students were in a strict sense _moduli_ as
+distinguished from _versus_; popular and not scholastic. They were,
+however, composed by men of culture, imbued with classical learning of
+some sort, and prepared by scholarship for the deftest and most
+delicate manipulation of the Latin language.
+
+Who were these Wandering Students, so often mentioned, and of whom
+nothing has been as yet related? As their name implies, they were men,
+and for the most part young men, travelling from university to
+university in search of knowledge. Far from their homes, without
+responsibilities, light of purse and light of heart, careless and
+pleasure-seeking, they ran a free, disreputable course, frequenting
+taverns at least as much as lecture-rooms, more capable of pronouncing
+judgment upon wine or women than upon a problem of divinity or logic.
+The conditions of medieval learning made it necessary to study
+different sciences in different parts of Europe; and a fixed habit of
+unrest, which seems to have pervaded society after the period of the
+Crusades, encouraged vagabondage in all classes. The extent to which
+travelling was carried in the Middle Ages for purposes of pilgrimage
+and commerce, out of pure curiosity or love of knowledge, for the
+bettering of trade in handicrafts or for self-improvement in the
+sciences, has only of late years been estimated at a just calculation.
+"The scholars," wrote a monk of Froidmont in the twelfth century, "are
+wont to roam around the world and visit all its cities, till much
+learning makes them mad; for in Paris they seek liberal arts, in
+Orleans authors, at Salerno gallipots, at Toledo demons, and in no
+place decent manners."
+
+These pilgrims to the shrines of knowledge formed a class apart. They
+were distinguished from the secular and religious clergy, inasmuch as
+they had taken no orders, or only minor orders, held no benefice or
+cure, and had entered into no conventual community. They were still
+more sharply distinguished from the laity, whom they scorned as
+brutes, and with whom they seem to have lived on terms of mutual
+hostility. One of these vagabond gownsmen would scarcely condescend to
+drink with a townsman:[6]--
+
+ "In aeterno igni
+ Cruciantur rustici, qui non sunt tam digni
+ Quod bibisse noverint bonum vinum vini."
+
+ "Aestimetur laicus ut brutus,
+ Nam ad artem surdus est et mutus."
+
+ "Litteratos convocat decus virginale,
+ Laicorum execrat pectus bestiale."
+
+In a parody of the Mass, which is called _Officium Lusorum,_ and in
+which the prayers are offered to Bacchus, we find this devout
+collect:[7]--"Omnipotens sempiterne deus, qui inter rusticos et
+clericos magnam discordiam seminasti, praesta quaesumus de laboribus
+eorum vivere, de mulieribus ipsorum vero et de morte deciorum semper
+gaudere."
+
+The English version of this ribald prayer is even more explicit. It
+runs thus:--"Deus qui multitudinem rusticorum ad servitium clericorum
+venire fecisti et militum et inter nos et ipsos discordiam seminasti."
+
+It is open to doubt whether the _milites_ or soldiers were included
+with the rustics in that laity, for which the students felt so bitter
+a contempt. But the tenor of some poems on love, especially the
+_Dispute of Phyllis and Flora_, shows that the student claimed a
+certain superiority over the soldier. This antagonism between clerk
+and rustic was heartily reciprocated. In a song on taverns the student
+is warned that he may meet with rough treatment from the
+clodhopper:[8]--
+
+ "O clerici dilecti,
+ Discite vitare
+ Tabernam horribilem,
+ Qui cupitis regnare;
+ Nec audeant vos rustici
+ Plagis verberare!
+
+ "Rusticus dum se
+ Sentit ebriatum,
+ Clericum non reputat
+ Militem armatum.
+ Vere plane consulo
+ Ut abstineatis,
+ Nec unquam cum rusticis
+ Tabernam ineatis."
+
+The affinities of the Wandering Students were rather with the Church
+than with laymen of any degree. They piqued themselves upon their
+title of _Clerici_, and added the epithet of _Vagi_. We shall see in
+the sequel that they stood in a peculiar relation of dependence upon
+ecclesiastical society.
+
+According to tendencies prevalent in the Middle Ages, they became a
+sort of guild, and proclaimed themselves with pride an Order. Nothing
+is more clearly marked in their poetry than the _esprit de corps_,
+which animates them with a cordial sense of brotherhood.[9] The same
+tendencies which prompted their association required that they should
+have a patron saint. But as the confraternity was anything but
+religious, this saint, or rather this eponymous hero, had to be a
+Rabelaisian character. He was called Golias, and his flock received
+the generic name of Goliardi. Golias was father and master; the
+Goliardi were his family, his sons, and pupils. _Familia Goliae_,
+_Magister Golias_, _Pueri Goliae_, _Discipulus Goliae_, are phrases to
+be culled from the rubrics of their literature.
+
+Much has been conjectured regarding these names and titles. Was Golias
+a real person? Did he give his own name to the Goliardi; or was he
+invented after the Goliardi had already acquired their designation? In
+either case, ought we to connect both words with the Latin _gula_, and
+so regard the Goliardi as notable gluttons; or with the Provençal
+_goliar_, _gualiar_, _gualiardor_, which carry a significance of
+deceit? Had Golias anything to do with Goliath of the Bible, the great
+Philistine, who in the present day would more properly be chosen as
+the hero of those classes which the students held in horror?
+
+It is not easy to answer these questions. All we know for certain is,
+that the term Goliardus was in common medieval use, and was employed
+as a synonym for Wandering Scholar in ecclesiastical documents. _Vagi
+scholares aut Goliardi--joculatores, goliardi seu bufones--goliardia
+vel histrionatus--vagi scholares qui goliardi vel histriones alio
+nomine appellantur--clerici ribaudi, maxime qui dicuntur de familia
+Goliae_: so run the acts of several Church Councils.[10] The word
+passed into modern languages. The _Grandes Chroniques de S. Denis_
+speak of _jugleor, enchanteor, goliardois, et autres manières de
+menestrieux_. Chaucer, in his description of the Miller, calls this
+merry narrator of fabliaux _a jangler and a goliardeis_. In _Piers
+Ploughman_ the _goliardeis_ is further explained to be _a glutton of
+words_, and talks in Latin rhyme.[11]
+
+Giraldus Cambrensis, during whose lifetime the name Golias first came
+into vogue, thought that this father of the Goliardic family was a
+real person.[12] He writes of him thus:--"A certain parasite called
+Golias, who in our time obtained wide notoriety for his gluttony and
+lechery, and by addiction to gulosity and debauchery deserved his
+surname, being of excellent culture but of bad manners, and of no
+moral discipline, uttered oftentimes and in many forms, both of rhythm
+and metre, infamous libels against the Pope and Curia of Rome, with no
+less impudence than imprudence." This is perhaps the most outspoken
+utterance with regard to the eponymous hero of the Goliardic class
+which we possess, and it deserves a close inspection.
+
+In the first place, Giraldus attributes the satiric poems which
+passed under the name of Golias to a single author famous in his days,
+and says of this poet that he used both modern rhythms and classical
+metres. The description would apply to Gualtherus de Insula, Walter of
+Lille, or, as he is also called, Walter of Chatillon; for some of this
+Walter's satires are composed in a curious mixture of the rhyming
+measures of the medieval hymns with classical hexameters.[13] Yet had
+Giraldus been pointing at Walter of Lille, a notable personage in his
+times, there is no good reason to suppose that he would have
+suppressed his real name, or have taken for granted that Golias was a
+_bona fide_ surname. On the theory that he knew Golias to be a mere
+nickname, and was aware that Walter of Lille was the actual satirist,
+we should have to explain his paragraph by the hypothesis that he
+chose to sneer at him under his _nom de guerre_ instead of
+stigmatising him openly in person.
+
+His remarks, at any rate, go far toward disposing of the old belief
+that the Goliardic satires were the work of Thomas Mapes. Giraldus was
+an intimate friend of that worthy, who deserves well of all lovers of
+medieval romance as a principal contributor to the Arthurian cycle. It
+is hardly possible that Giraldus should have gibbeted such a man under
+the sobriquet of Golias.
+
+But what, it may be asked, if Walter of Lille, without the cognisance
+of our English annalist, had in France obtained the chief fame of
+these poems? what if they afterwards were attributed in England to
+another Walter, his contemporary, himself a satirist of the monastic
+orders? The fact that Walter of Lille was known in Latin as Gualtherus
+de Insula, or Walter of the Island, may have confirmed the
+misapprehension thus suggested. It should be added that the ascription
+of the Goliardic satires to Walter Mapes or Map first occurs in MSS.
+of the fourteenth century.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 6: See the drinking song printed in _Walter Mapes_, p. xlv.,
+and _Carm. Bur._, pp. 198, 179.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Carm. Bur._, p. 249, note. There is a variation in the
+parody printed by Wright, _Rel. Antiq._, ii.]
+
+[Footnote 8: See A.P. von Bärnstein's little volume, _Ubi sunt qui
+ante nos_, p. 46.]
+
+[Footnote 9: See especially the songs _Ordo Noster_ and _Nos
+Vagabunduli_, translated below in Section xiii.]
+
+[Footnote 10: See Wright's introduction to _Walter Mapes_.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Ibid.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Ibid.]
+
+[Footnote 13: See Müldner, _Die zehn Gedichte des Walther von Lille_.
+1859. Walter Mapes (ed. Wright) is credited with five of these
+satires, including two which close each stanza with a hexameter from
+Juvenal, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Horace.]
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+I do not think there is much probability of arriving at certainty with
+regard to the problems indicated in the foregoing section. We must be
+content to accept the names Golias and Goliardi as we find them, and
+to treat of this literature as the product of a class, from the midst
+of which, as it is clear to any critic, more than one poet rose to
+eminence.
+
+One thing appears manifest from the references to the Goliardi which I
+have already quoted. That is, that the Wandering Students ranked in
+common estimation with jongleurs, buffoons, and minstrels. Both
+classes held a similar place in medieval society. Both were parasites
+devoted to the entertainment of their superiors in rank. Both were
+unattached, except by occasional engagements, to any fixed abode. But
+while the minstrels found their temporary homes in the castles of the
+nobility, we have reason to believe that the Goliardi haunted abbeys
+and amused the leisure of ecclesiastical lords.
+
+The personality of the writer disappears in nearly all the _Carmina
+Vagorum_. Instead of a poet with a name, we find a type; and the verse
+is put into the mouth of Golias himself, or the Archipoeta, or the
+Primate of the order. This merging of the individual in the class of
+which he forms a part is eminently characteristic of popular
+literature, and separates the Goliardic songs from those of the
+Provençal Troubadours. The emotions to which popular poetry gives
+expression are generic rather than personal. They are such that all
+the world, granted common sympathies and common proclivities, can feel
+them and adopt the mode of utterance invented for them by the singer.
+If there be any bar to their universal acceptance, it is only such as
+may belong to the peculiar conditions of the social class from which
+they have emanated. The _Rispetti_ of Tuscany imply a certain form of
+peasant life. The _Carmina Vagorum_ are coloured to some extent by the
+prejudices and proclivities of vagabond existence.
+
+Trenchantly true as the inspiration of a popular lyric may be,
+inevitable as may be the justice of its sentiment, unerring as may be
+its touch upon reality, still it lacks the note which marks it out for
+one man's utterance among a thousand. Composing it, the one has made
+himself the mouthpiece of the thousand. What the _Volkslied_ gains in
+universality it loses in individuality of character. Its applicability
+to human nature at large is obtained at the sacrifice of that
+interest which belongs to special circumstances. It suits every one
+who grieves or loves or triumphs. It does not indicate the love, the
+grief, the triumph of this man and no other. It possesses the pathos
+and the beauty of countless human lives prolonged through inarticulate
+generations, finding utterance at last in it. It is deficient in that
+particular intonation which makes a Shelley's voice differ from a
+Leopardi's, Petrarch's sonnets for Laura differ from Sidney's sonnets
+for Stella. It has always less of perceptible artistic effect, more
+enduring human quality. Some few of its lines are so well found, so
+rightly said, that they possess the certainty of natural things--a
+quality rare in the works of all but the greatest known poets. But
+these phrases with the accent of truest truth are often embedded in
+mere generalities and repetitions.
+
+These characteristics of popular poetry help to explain the frequent
+recurrence of the same ideas, the same expressions, the same stanzas
+even, in the lyrics of the Goliardi. A _Volkslied_, once created,
+becomes common property. It flies abroad like thistledown; settles and
+sows its seed; is maimed and mutilated; is improved or altered for the
+worse; is curtailed, expanded, adapted to divers purposes at different
+times and in very different relations.
+
+We may dismiss the problem of authorship partly as insoluble, partly
+as of slight importance for a literature which is manifestly popular.
+With even greater brevity may the problem of nationality be disposed
+of. Some critics have claimed an Italian, some an English, some a
+French, and some a German origin for the _Carmina Vagorum_. The truth
+is that, just as the _Clerici Vagi_ were themselves of all nations, so
+were their songs; and the use of a Latin common to all Europe in the
+Middle Ages renders it difficult even to conjecture the soil from
+which any particular lyric may have sprung. As is natural, a German
+codex contains more songs of Teutonic origin; an English displays
+greater abundance of English compositions. I have already observed
+that our two chief sources of Goliardic literature have many elements
+in common; but the treasures of the Benedictbeuern MS. differ in
+complexion from those of the Harleian in important minor details; and
+it is probable that if French and Italian stores were properly
+ransacked--which has not yet been done--we should note in them similar
+characteristic divergences.
+
+The _Carmina Burana_, by their frequent references to linden-trees and
+nightingales, and their numerous German refrains, indicate a German
+home for the poems on spring and love, in which they are specially
+rich.[14] The collections of our own land have an English turn of
+political thought; the names Anglia and Anglus not unfrequently occur;
+and the use of the word "Schellinck" in one of the _Carmina Burana_
+may point, perhaps, to an English origin. France claims her own, not
+only in the acknowledged pieces of Walter de Lille, but also in a few
+which exhibit old French refrains. To Italian conditions, if not to
+Italian poets, we may refer those that introduce spreading pines or
+olive-trees into their pictures, and one which yields the refrain
+_Bela mia_. The most important lyric of the series, _Golias'
+Confession_, was undoubtedly written at Pavia, but whether by an
+Italian or not we do not know. The probability is rather, perhaps, in
+favour of Teutonic authorship, since this _Confession_ is addressed to
+a German prelate. Here it may be noticed that the proper names of
+places and people are frequently altered to suit different countries;
+while in some cases they are indicated by an N, sufficiently
+suggestive of their generality. Thus the _Confession of Golias_ in the
+_Carmina Burana_ mentions _Electe Coloniae_; in an English version,
+introduces _Praesul Coventriae_. The prayer for alms, which I have
+translated in Section xiii., is addressed to _Decus N----_, thou
+honour of Norwich town, or Wittenberg, or wherever the wandering
+scholar may have chanced to be.
+
+With regard to the form and diction of the _Carmina Vagorum_, it is
+enough to say two things at the present time. First, a large portion
+of these pieces, including a majority of the satires and longer
+descriptive poems, are composed in measures borrowed from hymnology,
+follow the diction of the Church, and imitate the double-rhyming
+rhythms of her sequences. It is not unnatural, this being the case,
+that parodies of hymns should be comparatively common. Of these I
+shall produce some specimens in the course of this study. Secondly,
+those which do not exhibit popular hymn measures are clearly written
+for melodies, some of them very complicated in structure, suggesting
+part-songs and madrigals, with curious interlacing of long and short
+lines, double and single rhymes, recurrent ritournelles, and so forth.
+
+The ingenuity with which these poets adapted their language to the
+exigencies of the tune, taxing the fertility of Latin rhymes, and
+setting off the long sonorous words to great advantage, deserves
+admiring comment. At their best, it is almost impossible to reproduce
+in English the peculiar effects of their melodic artifices. But there
+is another side to the matter. At their worst, these Latin lyrics,
+moulded on a tune, degenerate into disjointed verbiage, sound and
+adaptation to song prevailing over sense and satisfaction to the mind.
+It must, however, be remembered that such lyrics, sometimes now almost
+unintelligible, have come down to us with a very mutilated text, after
+suffering the degradations through frequent oral transmission to which
+popular poetry is peculiarly liable.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 14: The more I study the songs of love and wine in this
+codex, the more convinced am I that they have their origin for the
+most part in South-Western Germany, Bavaria, the Bodensee, and
+Elsass.]
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+It is easier to say what the Goliardi wrote about than who the writers
+were, and what they felt and thought than by what names they were
+baptised. The mass of their literature, as it is at present known to
+us, divides into two broad classes. The one division includes poems
+on the themes of vagabond existence, the truant life of these
+capricious students; on spring-time and its rural pleasure; on love in
+many phases and for divers kinds of women; lastly, on wine and on the
+dice-box. The other division is devoted to graver topics; to satires
+on society, touching especially the Roman Court, and criticising
+eminent ecclesiastics in all countries; to moral dissertations, and to
+discourses on the brevity of life.
+
+Of the two divisions, the former yields by far the livelier image of
+the men we have to deal with. It will therefore form the staple of my
+argument. The latter blends at so many points with medieval literature
+of the monastic kind, that it is chiefly distinguished by boldness of
+censure and sincerity of invective. In these qualities the serious
+poems of the Goliardi, emanating from a class of men who moved behind
+the scenes and yet were free to speak their thoughts, are unique.
+Written with the satirist's eye upon the object of his sarcasm, tinged
+with the license of his vagabondage, throbbing with the passionate and
+nonchalant afflatus of the wine-cup, they wing their flight like
+poisoned arrows or plumed serpents with unerring straightness at
+abuses in high places.
+
+The wide space occupied by Nature in the secular poems of the Goliardi
+is remarkable. As a background to their love-songs we always find the
+woods and fields of May, abundant flowers and gushing rivulets,
+lime-trees and pines and olive-trees, through which soft winds are
+blowing. There are rose-bowers and nightingales; fauns, nymphs, and
+satyrs dancing on the sward. Choirs of mortal maidens emerge in the
+midst of this Claude-landscape. The scene, meanwhile, has been painted
+from experience, and felt with the enthusiasm of affection. It
+breathes of healthy open air, of life upon the road, of casual joys
+and wayside pleasure, snatched with careless heart by men whose tastes
+are natural. There is very little of the alcove or the closet in this
+verse; and the touch upon the world is so infantine, so tender, that
+we are indulgent to the generalities with which the poets deal.
+
+What has been said about popular poetry applies also to popular
+painting. In the landscapes of Goliardic literature there is nothing
+specific to a single locality--no name like Vaucluse, no pregnant
+touch that indicates one scene selected from a thousand. The landscape
+is always a background, more northern or more southern as the case may
+be, but penetrated with the feeling of the man who has been happy or
+has suffered there. This feeling, broadly, sensuously diffused, as in
+a masterpiece of Titian, prepares us for the human element to be
+exhibited.
+
+The foreground of these pictures is occupied by a pair of lovers
+meeting after the long winter's separation, a dance upon the village
+green, a young man gazing on the mistress he adores, a disconsolate
+exile from his home, the courtship of a student and a rustic beauty,
+or perhaps the grieved and melancholy figure of one whose sweetheart
+has proved faithless. Such actors in the comedy of life are defined
+with fervent intensity of touch against the leafy vistas of the
+scene. The lyrical cry emerges clear and sharp in all that concerns
+their humanity.
+
+The quality of love expressed is far from being either platonic or
+chivalrous. It is love of the sensuous, impulsive, appetitive kind, to
+which we give the name of Pagan. The finest outbursts of passion are
+emanations from a potent sexual desire. Meanwhile, nothing indicates
+the character or moral quality of either man or woman. The student and
+the girl are always _vis-à-vis_, fixed characters in this lyrical
+love-drama. He calls her Phyllis, Flora, Lydia, Glycerion, Caecilia.
+He remains unnamed, his physical emotion sufficing for personal
+description. The divinity presiding over them is Venus. Jove and
+Danae, Cupid and the Graces, Paris and Helen, follow in her train. All
+the current classical mythology is laid under cheap contribution. Yet
+the central emotion, the young man's heart's desire, is so vividly
+portrayed, that we seem to be overhearing the triumphant ebullition or
+the melancholy love-lament of a real soul.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+The sentiment of love is so important in the songs of the Wandering
+Students, that it may not be superfluous at this point to cull a few
+emphatic phrases which illustrate the core of their emotion, and to
+present these in the original Latin.
+
+I may first observe to what a large extent the ideas of spring and of
+female society were connected at that epoch. Winter was a dreary
+period, during which a man bore his fate and suffered. He emerged from
+it into sunshine, brightened by the intercourse with women, which was
+then made possible. This is how the winter is described:[15]--
+
+ "In omni loco congruo
+ Sermonis oblectatio
+ Cum sexu femineo
+ Evanuit omni modo."
+
+Of the true love-songs, only one refers expressly to the winter
+season. That, however, is the lyric upon Flora, which contains a
+detailed study of plastic form in the bold spirit of the Goliardic
+style.[16]
+
+The particularity with which the personal charms of women are
+described deserves attention. The portrait of Flora, to which I have
+just alluded, might be cited as one of the best specimens. But the
+slightest shades are discriminated, as in this touch:[17]--
+
+ "Labellulis
+ Castigate tumentibus."
+
+One girl has long tawny tresses: _Caesaries subrubea_. Another is
+praised for the masses of her dark hair: _Frons nimirum coronata,
+supercilium nigrata_. Roses and lilies vie, of course, upon the cheeks
+of all; and sometimes their sweetness surpasses the lily of the
+valley. From time to time a touch of truer poetry occurs; as, for
+instance[18]--
+
+ "O decora super ora
+ Belli Absalonis!"
+
+Or take again the outburst of passion in this stanza, where both the
+rhythm and the ponderous Latin words, together with the abrupt
+transition from the third to the fourth line, express a fine
+exaltation:[19]--
+
+ "Frons et gula, labra, mentum
+ Dant amoris alimentum;
+ Crines ejus adamavi,
+ Quoniam fuere flavi."
+
+The same kind of enthusiasm is more elaborately worked out in the
+following comparisons:[20]--
+
+ "Matutini sideris
+ Jubar praeis,
+ Et lilium
+ Rosaque periere:
+ Micat ebur dentium
+ Per labium,
+ Ut Sirium
+ Credat quis enitere."
+
+As might be expected, such lovers were not satisfied with
+contemplative pleasures:[21]--
+
+ "Visu, colloquio,
+ Contactu, basio,
+ Frui virgo dederat;
+ Sed aberat
+ Linea posterior
+ Et melior amori,
+ Quam nisi transiero,
+ De cetero
+ Sunt quae dantur alia
+ Materia furori."
+
+The conclusion of this song, which, taken in its integrity, deserves
+to be regarded as typical of what is pagan in this erotic literature,
+may be studied in the Appendix to _Carmina Burana_.
+
+Occasionally the lover's desire touches a higher point of
+spirituality:[22]--
+
+ "Non tactu sanabor labiorum,
+ Nisi cor unum fiat duorum
+ Et idem velle. Vale, flos florum!"
+
+Occasionally, the sensuous fervour assumes a passionate
+intensity:[23]--
+
+ "Nocte cum ea si dormiero,
+ Si sua labra semel suxero,
+ Mortem subire, placenter obire, vitamque finire,
+ Libens potero."
+
+Very rarely there is a strong desire expressed for fidelity, as in a
+beautiful lyric of absence, which I hope to give translated in full in
+my 17th Section.
+
+But the end to be attained is always such as is summed up in these
+brief words placed upon a girl's lips:[24]--
+
+ "Dulcissime,
+ Totam tibi subdo me."
+
+And the motto of both sexes is this:[25]--
+
+ "Quicquid agant alii,
+ Juvenes amemus."
+
+It may be added, in conclusion, that the sweethearts of our students
+seem to have been mostly girls of the working and rustic classes,
+sometimes women of bad fame, rarely married women. In no case that has
+come beneath my notice is there any hint that one of them aspired to
+such amours with noble ladies as distinguished the Troubadours. A
+democratic tone, a tone of the proletariate, is rather strangely blent
+with the display of learning, and with the more than common literary
+skill apparent in their work.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 15: _Carm. Bur._, p. 174.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Ibid., p. 149, translated below in Section xvii.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Ibid., p. 130.]
+
+[Footnote 18: _Carm. Bur._, p. 200.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Ibid., p. 231.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Ibid., p. 121.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Ibid., p. 135.]
+
+[Footnote 22: _Carm. Bur._, p. 145.]
+
+[Footnote 23: Ibid., p. 230.]
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+The drinking-songs are equally spontaneous and fresh. Anacreon pales
+before the brilliancy of the Archipoeta when wine is in his veins, and
+the fountain of the Bacchic chant swells with gushes of strongly
+emphasised bold double rhymes, each throbbing like a man's firm
+stroke upon the strings of lyres. A fine audacity breathes through the
+praises of the wine-god, sometimes rising to lyric rapture, sometimes
+sinking to parody and innuendo, but always carrying the bard on
+rolling wheels along the paths of song. The reality of the inspiration
+is indubitable. These Bacchanalian choruses have been indited in the
+tavern, with a crowd of topers round the poet, with the rattle of the
+dice-box ringing in his ears, and with the facile maidens of his
+volatile amours draining the wine-cup at his elbow.
+
+Wine is celebrated as the source of pleasure in social life,
+provocative of love, parent of poetry:[26]--
+
+ "Bacchus forte superans
+ Pectora virorum
+ In amorem concitat
+ Animos eorum.
+
+ "Bacchus saepe visitans
+ Mulierum genus
+ Facit eas subditas
+ Tibi, O tu Venus!"
+
+From his temple, the tavern, water-drinkers and fastidious persons are
+peremptorily warned:[27]--
+
+ "Qui potare non potestis,
+ Ite procul ab his festis;
+ Non est hic locus modestis:
+ Devitantur plus quam pestis."
+
+The tavern is loved better than the church, and a bowl of wine than
+the sacramental chalice:[28]--
+
+ "Magis quam ecclesiam
+ Diligo tabernam."
+
+ "Mihi sapit dulcius
+ Vinum de taberna,
+ Quam quod aqua miscuit
+ Praesulis pincerna."
+
+As in the love-songs, so in these drinking-songs we find no lack of
+mythological allusions. Nor are the grammatical quibbles, which might
+also have been indicated as a defect of the erotic poetry, conspicuous
+by absence. But both alike are impotent to break the spell of evident
+sincerity. We discount them as belonging to the euphuism of a certain
+epoch, and are rather surprised than otherwise that they should not be
+more apparent. The real and serious defect of Goliardic literature is
+not affectation, but something very different, which I shall try to
+indicate in the last Section of this treatise. Venus and Helen, Liber
+and Lyaeus, are but the current coin of poetic diction common to the
+whole student class. These Olympian deities merge without a note of
+discord into the dim background of a medieval pothouse or the sylvan
+shades of some ephemeral amour, leaving the realism of natural
+appetite in either case untouched.
+
+It is by no means the thin and conventional sprinkling of classical
+erudition which makes these poems of the Goliardi pagan, and reminds
+the student of Renaissance art. Conversely, the scholastic plays on
+words which they contain do not stamp them out as medieval. Both of
+these qualities are _rococo_ and superficial rather than essential and
+distinctive in their style. After making due allowances for either
+element of oddity, a true connoisseur will gratefully appreciate the
+spontaneous note of enjoyment, the disengagement from ties and duties
+imposed by temporal respectability, the frank animalism, which
+connects these vivid hymns to Bacchus and Venus with past Aristophanes
+and future Rabelais. They celebrate the eternal presence of
+mirth-making powers in hearts of men, apart from time and place and
+varying dogmas which do not concern deities of Nature.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 24: _Carm. Bur._, p. 133.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Ibid., p. 251.]
+
+[Footnote 26: _Carm. Bur._, p. 238.]
+
+[Footnote 27: Ibid., p. 240.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Wright's _Walter Mapes_, p. xlv.; _Carm. Bur._, p. 69.]
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+The time has now come for me to introduce my reader to the versions I
+have made from the songs of Wandering Students. I must remind him
+that, while the majority of these translations aim at literal
+exactness and close imitation of the originals in rhyme and structure,
+others are more paraphrastic. It has always been my creed that a good
+translation should resemble a plaster-cast; the English being _plaquè_
+upon the original, so as to reproduce its exact form, although it
+cannot convey the effects of bronze or marble, which belong to the
+material of the work of art. But this method has not always seemed to
+me the most desirable for rendering poems, an eminent quality of which
+is facility and spontaneity. In order to obtain that quality in our
+language, the form has occasionally to be sacrificed.
+
+What Coleridge has reported to have said of Southey may be applied to
+a translator. He too "is in some sort like an elegant setter of
+jewels; the stones are not his own: he gives them all the advantage of
+his art, but not their native brilliancy." I feel even more than this
+when I attempt translation, and reflect that, unlike the jeweller, it
+is my doom to reduce the lustre of the gems I handle, even if I do not
+substitute paste and pebbles. Yet I am frequently enticed to repeat
+experiments, which afterwards I regard in the light of failures. What
+allures me first is the pleasure of passing into that intimate
+familiarity with art which only a copyist or a translator enjoys. I am
+next impelled by the desire to fix the attention of readers on things
+which I admire, and which are possibly beyond their scope of view.
+Lastly comes that _ignis fatuus_ of the hope, for ever renewed, if
+also for ever disappointed, that some addition may be made in this way
+to the wealth of English poetry. A few exquisite pieces in Latin
+literature, the Catullian _Ille mi par_, for example, a few in our
+own, such as Jonson's _Drink to me only with thine eyes_, are
+translations. Possibly the miracle of such poetic transmutation may be
+repeated for me; possibly an English song may come to birth by my
+means also. With this hope in view, the translator is strongly tempted
+to engraft upon his versions elegances in the spirit of his native
+language, or to use the motives of the original for improvisations in
+his own manner. I must plead guilty to having here and there yielded
+to this temptation, as may appear upon comparison of my English with
+the Latin. All translation is a compromise; and while being conscious
+of having to sacrifice much, the translator finds himself often
+seeking to add something as a makeweight.
+
+I shall divide my specimens into nine Sections. The first will include
+those which deal with the Order of Wandering Students in general,
+winding up with the _Confession_ ascribed to Golias, the father of the
+family. The second, third, fourth, and fifth are closely connected,
+since they contain spring-songs, pastorals, descriptive poems touching
+upon love, and erotic lyrics. The sixth Section will be devoted to a
+few songs of exile, doubt, and sorrow. In the seventh we shall reach
+anacreontics on the theme of wine, passing in the eighth to parodies
+and comic pieces. Four or five serious compositions will close the
+list in the ninth Section.
+
+At the end of the book I mean to print a table containing detailed
+references to the originals of the songs I have chosen for
+translation, together with an index of the principal works that have
+been published on this subject.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+The first song which concerns the Order of Wandering Students in
+general has been attributed to the Archipoeta or head-bard of the
+guild. Whoever this poet may have been, it is to him that we owe the
+_Confession of Golias_, by far the most spirited composition of the
+whole Goliardic species. I do not think the style of the poem on the
+Order, though it belongs to a good period, justifies our ascribing it
+to so inspired and genial a lyrist.
+
+The argument runs as follows. Just as commission was given to the
+Apostles to go forth and preach in the whole world, so have the
+Wandering Students a vocation to travel, and to test the hearts of men
+wherever they may sojourn. A burlesque turn is given to this function
+of the _Vagi_. Yet their consciousness of a satiric mission, their
+willingness to pose as critics of society from the independent
+vantage-ground of vagabondage, seems seriously hinted at.
+
+The chief part of the song is devoted to a description of the
+comprehensive nature of the Order, which receives all sorts and
+conditions of men, and makes no distinction of nationality. The
+habitual poverty of its members, their favourite pastimes and vices,
+their love of gaming and hatred of early rising, are set forth with
+some humour.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE ORDER OF WANDERING STUDENTS.
+
+No. 1.
+
+
+ At the mandate, Go ye forth,
+ Through the whole world hurry!
+ Priests tramp out toward south and north,
+ Monks and hermits skurry,
+ Levites smooth the gospel leave,
+ Bent on ambulation;
+ Each and all to our sect cleave,
+ Which is life's salvation.
+
+ In this sect of ours 'tis writ:
+ Prove all things in season;
+ Weigh this life and judge of it
+ By your riper reason;
+ 'Gainst all evil clerks be you
+ Steadfast in resistance,
+ Who refuse large tithe and due
+ Unto your subsistence.
+
+ Marquesses, Bavarians,
+ Austrians and Saxons,
+ Noblemen and chiefs of clans,
+ Glorious by your actions!
+ Listen, comrades all, I pray,
+ To these new decretals:
+ Misers they must meet decay,
+ Niggardly gold-beetles.
+
+ We the laws of charity
+ Found, nor let them crumble;
+ For into our order we
+ Take both high and humble;
+ Rich and poor men we receive,
+ In our bosom cherish;
+ Welcome those the shavelings leave
+ At their doors to perish.
+
+ We receive the tonsured monk,
+ Let him take his pittance;
+ And the parson with his punk,
+ If he craves admittance;
+ Masters with their bands of boys,
+ Priests with high dominion;
+ But the scholar who enjoys
+ Just one coat's our minion!
+
+ This our sect doth entertain
+ Just men and unjust ones;
+ Halt, lame, weak of limb or brain,
+ Strong men and robust ones;
+ Those who flourish in their pride,
+ Those whom age makes stupid;
+ Frigid folk and hot folk fried
+ In the fires of Cupid.
+
+ Tranquil souls and bellicose,
+ Peacemaker and foeman;
+ Czech and Hun, and mixed with those
+ German, Slav, and Roman;
+ Men of middling size and weight,
+ Dwarfs and giants mighty;
+ Men of modest heart and state,
+ Vain men, proud and flighty.
+
+ Of the Wanderers' order I
+ Tell the Legislature--
+ They whose life is free and high,
+ Gentle too their nature--
+ They who'd rather scrape a fat
+ Dish in gravy swimming,
+ Than in sooth to marvel at
+ Barns with barley brimming.
+
+ Now this order, as I ken,
+ Is called sect or section,
+ Since its sectaries are men
+ Divers in complexion;
+ Therefore _hic_ and _haec_ and _hoc_
+ Suit it in declension,
+ Since so multiform a flock
+ Here finds comprehension.
+
+ This our order hath decried
+ Matins with a warning;
+ For that certain phantoms glide
+ In the early morning,
+ Whereby pass into man's brain
+ Visions of vain folly;
+ Early risers are insane,
+ Racked by melancholy.
+
+ This our order doth proscribe
+ All the year round matins;
+ When they've left their beds, our tribe
+ In the tap sing latins;
+ There they call for wine for all,
+ Roasted fowl and chicken;
+ Hazard's threats no hearts appal,
+ Though his strokes still thicken.
+
+ This our order doth forbid
+ Double clothes with loathing:
+ He whose nakedness is hid
+ With one vest hath clothing:
+ Soon one throws his cloak aside
+ At the dice-box calling;
+ Next his girdle is untied,
+ While the cards are falling.
+
+ What I've said of upper clothes
+ To the nether reaches;
+ They who own a shirt, let those
+ Think no more of breeches;
+ If one boasts big boots to use,
+ Let him leave his gaiters;
+ They who this firm law refuse
+ Shall be counted traitors.
+
+ No one, none shall wander forth
+ Fasting from the table;
+ If thou'rt poor, from south and north
+ Beg as thou art able!
+ Hath it not been often seen
+ That one coin brings many,
+ When a gamester on the green
+ Stakes his lucky penny?
+
+ No one on the road should walk
+ 'Gainst the wind--'tis madness;
+ Nor in poverty shall stalk
+ With a face of sadness;
+ Let him bear him bravely then,
+ Hope sustain his spirit;
+ After heavy trials men
+ Better luck inherit!
+
+ While throughout the world you rove,
+ Thus uphold your banners;
+ Give these reasons why you prove
+ Hearts of men and manners:
+ "To reprove the reprobate,
+ Probity approving,
+ Improbate from approbate
+ To remove, I'm moving."
+
+The next song is a lament for the decay of the Order and the
+suppression of its privileges. It was written, to all appearances, at
+a later date, and is inferior in style. The Goliardi had already, we
+learn from it, exchanged poverty for luxury. Instead of tramping on
+the hard hoof, they moved with a retinue of mounted servants. We seem
+to trace in the lament a change from habits of simple vagabondage to
+professional dependence, as minstrels and secretaries, upon men of
+rank in Church and State, which came over the Goliardic class. This
+poem, it may be mentioned, does not occur in the _Carmina Burana_, nor
+is it included among those which bear the name of Walter Mapes or Map.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE DECAY OF THE ORDER.
+
+No. 2.
+
+
+ Once (it was in days of yore)
+ This our order flourished;
+ Popes, whom Cardinals adore,
+ It with honours nourished;
+ Licences desirable
+ They gave, nought desiring;
+ While our prayers, the beads we tell,
+ Served us for our hiring.
+
+ Now this order (so time runs)
+ Is made tributary;
+ With the ruck of Adam's sons
+ We must draw and carry;
+ Ground by common serfdom down,
+ By our debts confounded,
+ Debts to market-place and town
+ With the Jews compounded.
+
+ Once ('twas when the simple state
+ Of our order lasted)
+ All men praised us, no man's hate
+ Harried us or wasted;
+ Rates and taxes on our crew
+ There was none to levy;
+ But the sect, douce men and true,
+ Served God in a bevy.
+
+ Now some envious folks, who spy
+ Sumptuous equipages,
+ Horses, litters passing by,
+ And a host of pages,
+ Say, "Unless their purses were
+ Quite with wealth o'erflowing,
+ They could never thus, I swear,
+ Round about be going!"
+
+ Such men do not think nor own
+ How with toil we bend us,
+ Not to feed ourselves alone,
+ But the folk who tend us:
+ On all comers, all who come,
+ We our substance lavish,
+ Therefore 'tis a trifling sum
+ For ourselves we ravish.
+
+ On this subject, at this time,
+ What we've said suffices:
+ Let us leave it, lead the rhyme
+ Back to our devices:
+ We the miseries of this life
+ Bear with cheerful spirit,
+ That Heaven's bounty after strife
+ We may duly merit.
+
+ 'Tis a sign that God the Lord
+ Will not let us perish,
+ Since with scourge and rod and sword
+ He our souls doth cherish;
+ He amid this vale of woes
+ Makes us bear the burden,
+ That true joys in heaven's repose
+ May be ours for guerdon.
+
+Next in order to these poems, which display the Wandering Students as
+a class, I will produce two that exhibit their mode of life in detail.
+The first is a begging petition, addressed by a scholar on the tramp
+to the great man of the place where he is staying. The name of the
+place, as I have already noticed, is only indicated by an N. The nasal
+whine of a suppliant for alms, begging, as Erasmus begged, not in the
+name of charity, but of learning, makes itself heard both in the
+rhyme and rhythm of the original Latin. I have tried to follow the
+sing-song doggerel.
+
+
+
+
+A WANDERING STUDENT'S PETITION.
+
+No. 3.
+
+
+ I, a wandering scholar lad,
+ Born for toil and sadness,
+ Oftentimes am driven by
+ Poverty to madness.
+
+ Literature and knowledge I
+ Fain would still be earning,
+ Were it not that want of pelf
+ Makes me cease from learning.
+
+ These torn clothes that cover me
+ Are too thin and rotten;
+ Oft I have to suffer cold,
+ By the warmth forgotten.
+
+ Scarce I can attend at church,
+ Sing God's praises duly;
+ Mass and vespers both I miss,
+ Though I love them truly.
+
+ Oh, thou pride of N----,
+ By thy worth I pray thee
+ Give the suppliant help in need,
+ Heaven will sure repay thee.
+
+ Take a mind unto thee now
+ Like unto St. Martin;
+ Clothe the pilgrim's nakedness,
+ Wish him well at parting.
+
+ So may God translate your soul
+ Into peace eternal,
+ And the bliss of saints be yours
+ In His realm supernal.
+
+The second is a jovial _Song of the Open Road_, throbbing with the
+exhilaration of young life and madcap impudence. We must imagine that
+two vagabond students are drinking together before they part upon
+their several ways. One addresses the other as _frater catholice, vir
+apostolice_, vows to befriend him, and expounds the laws of loyalty
+which bind the brotherhood together. To the rest of the world they are
+a terror and a nuisance. Honest folk are jeeringly forbidden to beware
+of the _quadrivium_, which is apt to form a fourfold rogue instead of
+a scholar in four branches of knowledge.
+
+The Latin metre is so light, careless, and airy, that I must admit an
+almost complete failure to do it justice in my English version. The
+refrain appears intended to imitate a bugle-call.
+
+
+
+
+A SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD.
+
+No. 4.
+
+
+ We in our wandering,
+ Blithesome and squandering,
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ Eat to satiety,
+ Drink with propriety;
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ Laugh till our sides we split,
+ Rags on our hides we fit;
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ Jesting eternally,
+ Quaffing infernally:
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ Craft's in the bone of us,
+ Fear 'tis unknown of us:
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ When we're in neediness,
+ Thieve we with greediness:
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ Brother catholical,
+ Man apostolical,
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ Say what you will have done,
+ What you ask 'twill be done!
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ Folk, fear the toss of the
+ Horns of philosophy!
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ Here comes a quadruple
+ Spoiler and prodigal!
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ License and vanity
+ Pamper insanity:
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ As the Pope bade us do,
+ Brother to brother's true:
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ Brother, best friend, adieu!
+ Now, I must part from you!
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ When will our meeting be?
+ Glad shall our greeting be!
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ Vows valedictory
+ Now have the victory;
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+ Clasped on each other's breast,
+ Brother to brother pressed,
+ Tara, tantara, teino!
+
+In the fourth place I insert the _Confession of Golias_. This
+important composition lays bare the inner nature of a Wandering
+Student, describing his vagrant habits, his volatile and
+indiscriminate amours, his passion for the dice-box, his devotion to
+wine, and the poetic inspiration he was wont to draw from it.
+
+In England this _Confession_ was attributed to Walter Map; and the
+famous drinking-song, on which the Archdeacon of Oxford's reputation
+principally rests in modern times, was extracted from the stanzas II
+_et seq._[29] But, though Wright is unwilling to refuse Map such
+honour as may accrue to his fame from the composition, we have little
+reason to regard it as his work. The song was clearly written at
+Pavia--a point inexplicably overlooked by Wright in the note appended
+to stanza 9--and the Archbishop-elect of Cologne, who is appealed to
+by name in stanza 24, was Reinald von Dassel, a minister of Frederick
+Barbarossa. This circumstance enables us to determine the date of the
+poem between 1162 and 1165. When the _Confession_ was manipulated for
+English readers, _Praesul Coventrensium, Praesul mibi cognite_, and _O
+pastor ecclesiae_ were in several MS. redactions substituted for
+_Electe Coloniae_. Instead of _Papiae_, in stanza 8, we read _in
+mundo_; but in stanza 9, where the rhyme required it, _Papiae_ was
+left standing--a sufficient indication of literary rehandling by a
+clumsy scribe. In the text of the _Carmina Burana_, the _Confession_
+winds up with a petition that Reinald von Dassel should employ the
+poet as a secretary, or should bestow some mark of his bounty upon
+him.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 29: Wright's _Walter Mapes_, p. xlv.]
+
+
+
+
+THE CONFESSION OF GOLIAS.
+
+No. 5.
+
+
+ Boiling in my spirit's veins
+ With fierce indignation,
+ From my bitterness of soul
+ Springs self-revelation:
+ Framed am I of flimsy stuff,
+ Fit for levitation,
+ Like a thin leaf which the wind
+ Scatters from its station.
+
+ While it is the wise man's part
+ With deliberation
+ On a rock to base his heart's
+ Permanent foundation,
+ With a running river I
+ Find my just equation,
+ Which beneath the self-same sky
+ Hath no habitation.
+
+ Carried am I like a ship
+ Left without a sailor,
+ Like a bird that through the air
+ Flies where tempests hale her;
+ Chains and fetters hold me not,
+ Naught avails a jailer;
+ Still I find my fellows out,
+ Toper, gamester, railer.
+
+ To my mind all gravity
+ Is a grave subjection;
+ Sweeter far than honey are
+ Jokes and free affection.
+ All that Venus bids me do,
+ Do I with erection,
+ For she ne'er in heart of man
+ Dwelt with dull dejection.
+
+ Down the broad road do I run,
+ As the way of youth is;
+ Snare myself in sin, and ne'er
+ Think where faith and truth is;
+ Eager far for pleasure more
+ Than soul's health, the sooth is,
+ For this flesh of mine I care,
+ Seek not ruth where ruth is.
+
+ Prelate, most discreet of priests,
+ Grant me absolution!
+ Dear's the death whereof I die,
+ Sweet my dissolution;
+ For my heart is wounded by
+ Beauty's soft suffusion;
+ All the girls I come not nigh,
+ Mine are in illusion.
+
+ 'Tis most arduous to make
+ Nature's self surrender;
+ Seeing girls, to blush and be
+ Purity's defender!
+ We young men our longings ne'er
+ Shall to stern law render,
+ Or preserve our fancies from
+ Bodies smooth and tender.
+
+ Who, when into fire he falls,
+ Keeps himself from burning?
+ Who within Pavia's walls
+ Fame of chaste is earning?
+ Venus with her finger calls
+ Youths at every turning,
+ Snares them with her eyes, and thralls
+ With her amorous yearning.
+
+ If you brought Hippolitus
+ To Pavia Sunday,
+ He'd not be Hippolitus
+ On the following Monday;
+ Venus there keeps holiday
+ Every day as one day;
+ 'Mid these towers in no tower dwells
+ Venus Verecunda.
+
+ In the second place I own
+ To the vice of gaming:
+ Cold indeed outside I seem,
+ Yet my soul is flaming:
+ But when once the dice-box hath
+ Stripped me to my shaming,
+ Make I songs and verses fit
+ For the world's acclaiming.
+
+ In the third place, I will speak
+ Of the tavern's pleasure;
+ For I never found nor find
+ There the least displeasure;
+ Nor shall find it till I greet
+ Angels without measure,
+ Singing requiems for the souls
+ In eternal leisure.
+
+ In the public-house to die
+ Is my resolution;
+ Let wine to my lips be nigh
+ At life's dissolution:
+ That will make the angels cry,
+ With glad elocution,
+ "Grant this toper, God on high,
+ Grace and absolution!"
+
+ With the cup the soul lights up,
+ Inspirations flicker;
+ Nectar lifts the soul on high
+ With its heavenly ichor:
+ To my lips a sounder taste
+ Hath the tavern's liquor
+ Than the wine a village clerk
+ Waters for the vicar.
+
+ Nature gives to every man
+ Some gift serviceable;
+ Write I never could nor can
+ Hungry at the table;
+ Fasting, any stripling to
+ Vanquish me is able;
+ Hunger, thirst, I liken to
+ Death that ends the fable.
+
+ Nature gives to every man
+ Gifts as she is willing;
+ I compose my verses when
+ Good wine I am swilling,
+ Wine the best for jolly guest
+ Jolly hosts are filling;
+ From such wine rare fancies fine
+ Flow like dews distilling.
+
+ Such my verse is wont to be
+ As the wine I swallow;
+ No ripe thoughts enliven me
+ While my stomach's hollow;
+ Hungry wits on hungry lips
+ Like a shadow follow,
+ But when once I'm in my cups,
+ I can beat Apollo.
+
+ Never to my spirit yet
+ Flew poetic vision
+ Until first my belly had
+ Plentiful provision;
+ Let but Bacchus in the brain
+ Take a strong position,
+ Then comes Phoebus flowing in
+ With a fine precision.
+
+ There are poets, worthy men,
+ Shrink from public places,
+ And in lurking-hole or den
+ Hide their pallid faces;
+ There they study, sweat, and woo
+ Pallas and the Graces,
+ But bring nothing forth to view
+ Worth the girls' embraces.
+
+ Fasting, thirsting, toil the bards,
+ Swift years flying o'er them;
+ Shun the strife of open life,
+ Tumults of the forum;
+ They, to sing some deathless thing,
+ Lest the world ignore them,
+ Die the death, expend their breath,
+ Drowned in dull decorum.
+
+ Lo! my frailties I've betrayed,
+ Shown you every token,
+ Told you what your servitors
+ Have against me spoken;
+ But of those men each and all
+ Leave their sins unspoken,
+ Though they play, enjoy to-day,
+ Scorn their pledges broken.
+
+ Now within the audience-room
+ Of this blessed prelate,
+ Sent to hunt out vice, and from
+ Hearts of men expel it;
+ Let him rise, nor spare the bard,
+ Cast at him a pellet;
+ He whose heart knows not crime's smart,
+ Show my sin and tell it!
+
+ I have uttered openly
+ All I knew that shamed me,
+ And have spued the poison forth
+ That so long defamed me;
+ Of my old ways I repent,
+ New life hath reclaimed me;
+ God beholds the heart--'twas man
+ Viewed the face and blamed me.
+
+ Goodness now hath won my love,
+ I am wroth with vices;
+ Made a new man in my mind,
+ Lo, my soul arises!
+ Like a babe new milk I drink--
+ Milk for me suffices,
+ Lest my heart should longer be
+ Filled with vain devices.
+
+ Thou Elect of fair Cologne,
+ Listen to my pleading!
+ Spurn not thou the penitent;
+ See, his heart is bleeding!
+ Give me penance! what is due
+ For my faults exceeding
+ I will bear with willing cheer,
+ All thy precepts heeding.
+
+ Lo, the lion, king of beasts,
+ Spares the meek and lowly;
+ Toward submissive creatures he
+ Tames his anger wholly.
+ Do the like, ye powers of earth,
+ Temporal and holy!
+ Bitterness is more than's right
+ When 'tis bitter solely.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+Having been introduced to the worshipful order of vagrants both in
+their collective and in their personal capacity, we will now follow
+them to the woods and fields in spring. It was here that they sought
+love-adventures and took pastime after the restraints of winter.
+
+The spring-songs are all, in the truest sense of the word,
+_lieder_--lyrics for music. Their affinities of form and rhythm are
+less with ecclesiastical verse than with the poetry of the Minnesinger
+and the Troubadour. Sometimes we are reminded of the French
+_pastourelle_, sometimes of the rustic ditty, with its monotonous
+refrain.
+
+The exhilaration of the season which they breathe has something of the
+freshness of a lark's song, something at times of the richness of the
+nightingale's lament. The defect of the species may be indicated in a
+single phrase. It is a tedious reiteration of commonplaces in the
+opening stanzas. Here, however, is a lark-song.
+
+
+
+
+WELCOME TO SPRING.
+
+No. 6.
+
+
+ Spring is coming! longed-for spring
+ Now his joy discloses;
+ On his fair brow in a ring
+ Bloom empurpled roses!
+ Birds are gay; how sweet their lay!
+ Tuneful is the measure;
+ The wild wood grows green again,
+ Songsters change our winter's pain
+ To a mirthful pleasure.
+
+ Now let young men gather flowers,
+ On their foreheads bind them,
+ Maidens pluck them from the bowers,
+ Then, when they have twined them,
+ Breathe perfume from bud and bloom,
+ Where young love reposes,
+ And into the meadows so
+ All together laughing go,
+ Crowned with ruddy roses.
+
+Here again the nightingale's song, contending with the young man's
+heart's lament of love, makes itself heard.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVER AND THE NIGHTINGALE.
+
+No. 7.
+
+
+ These hours of spring are jolly;
+ Maidens, be gay!
+ Shake off dull melancholy,
+ Ye lads, to-day!
+ Oh! all abloom am I!
+ It is a maiden love that makes me sigh,
+ A new, new love it is wherewith I die!
+
+ The nightingale is singing
+ So sweet a lay!
+ Her glad voice heavenward flinging--
+ No check, no stay.
+
+ Flower of girls love-laden
+ Is my sweetheart;
+ Of roses red the maiden
+ For whom I smart.
+
+ The promise that she gives me
+ Makes my heart bloom;
+ If she denies, she drives me
+ Forth to the gloom.
+
+ My maid, to me relenting,
+ Is fain for play;
+ Her pure heart, unconsenting,
+ Saith, "Lover, stay!"
+
+ Hush, Philomel, thy singing,
+ This little rest!
+ Let the soul's song rise ringing
+ Up from the breast!
+
+ In desolate Decembers
+ Man bides his time:
+ Spring stirs the slumbering embers;
+ Love-juices climb.
+
+ Come, mistress, come, my maiden!
+ Bring joy to me!
+ Come, come, thou beauty-laden!
+ I die for thee!
+ O all abloom am I!
+ It is a maiden love that makes me sigh,
+ A new, new love it is wherewith I die!
+
+There is a very pretty _Invitation to Youth_, the refrain of which,
+though partly undecipherable, seems to indicate an Italian origin. I
+have thought it well to omit this refrain; but it might be rendered
+thus, maintaining the strange and probably corrupt reading of the last
+line:--
+
+ "List, my fair, list, _bela mia_,
+ To the thousand charms of Venus!
+ _Da hizevaleria_."
+
+
+
+
+THE INVITATION TO YOUTH.
+
+No. 8.
+
+
+ Take your pleasure, dance and play,
+ Each with other while ye may:
+ Youth is nimble, full of grace;
+ Age is lame, of tardy pace.
+
+ We the wars of love should wage,
+ Who are yet of tender age;
+ 'Neath the tents of Venus dwell
+ All the joys that youth loves well.
+
+ Young men kindle heart's desire;
+ You may liken them to fire:
+ Old men frighten love away
+ With cold frost and dry decay.
+
+A roundelay, which might be styled the _Praise of May_ or the
+exhortation to be liberal in love by _The Example of the Rose_, shall
+follow.
+
+
+
+
+THE EXAMPLE OF THE ROSE.
+
+No. 9.
+
+
+ Winter's untruth yields at last,
+ Spring renews old mother earth;
+ Angry storms are overpast,
+ Sunbeams fill the air with mirth;
+ Pregnant, ripening unto birth,
+ All the world reposes.
+
+ Our delightful month of May,
+ Not by birth, but by degree,
+ Took the first place, poets say;
+ Since the whole year's cycle he,
+ Youngest, loveliest, leads with glee,
+ And the cycle closes.
+
+ From the honours of the rose
+ They decline, the rose abuse,
+ Who, when roses red unclose,
+ Seek not their own sweets to use;
+ 'Tis with largess, liberal dues,
+ That the rose discloses.
+
+ Taught to wanton, taught to play,
+ By the young year's wanton flower,
+ We will take no heed to-day,
+ Have no thought for thrift this hour;
+ Thrift, whose uncongenial power
+ Laws on youth imposes.
+
+Another song, blending the praises of spring with a little pagan vow
+to Cupid, has in the original Latin a distinction and purity of
+outline which might be almost called Horatian.
+
+
+
+
+THE VOW TO CUPID.
+
+No. 10.
+
+
+ Winter, now thy spite is spent,
+ Frost and ice and branches bent!
+ Fogs and furious storms are o'er,
+ Sloth and torpor, sorrow frore,
+ Pallid wrath, lean discontent.
+
+ Comes the graceful band of May!
+ Cloudless shines the limpid day,
+ Shine by night the Pleiades;
+ While a grateful summer breeze
+ Makes the season soft and gay.
+
+ Golden Love I shine forth to view!
+ Souls of stubborn men subdue!
+ See me bend! what is thy mind?
+ Make the girl thou givest kind,
+ And a leaping ram's thy due!
+
+ O the jocund face of earth,
+ Breathing with young grassy birth!
+ Every tree with foliage clad,
+ Singing birds in greenwood glad,
+ Flowering fields for lovers' mirth!
+
+Nor is the next far below it in the same qualities of neatness and
+artistic brevity.
+
+
+
+
+A-MAYING.
+
+No. 11.
+
+
+ Now the fields are laughing; now the maids
+ Take their pastime; laugh the leafy glades:
+ Now the summer days are blooming,
+ And the flowers their chaliced lamps for love illuming.
+ Fruit-trees blossom; woods grow green again;
+ Winter's rage is past: O ye young men,
+ With the May-bloom shake off sadness!
+ Love is luring you to join the maidens' gladness.
+
+ Let us then together sport and play;
+ Cytherea bids the young be gay:
+ Laughter soft and happy voices,
+ Hope and love invite to mirth when May rejoices.
+
+All the spring is in the lyric next upon my list.
+
+
+
+
+THE RETURN OF SPRING:
+
+No. 12.
+
+
+ Spring returns, the glad new-comer,
+ Bringing pleasure, banning pain:
+ Meadows bloom with early summer,
+ And the sun shines out again:
+ All sad thoughts and passions vanish;
+ Plenteous Summer comes to banish
+ Winter with his starveling train.
+
+ Hails and snows and frosts together
+ Melt and thaw like dews away;
+ While the spring in cloudless weather
+ Sucks the breast of jocund May;
+ Sad's the man and born for sorrow
+ Who can live not, dares not borrow
+ Gladness from a summer's day.
+
+ Full of joy and jubilation,
+ Drunk with honey of delight,
+ Are the lads whose aspiration
+ Is the palm of Cupid's fight!
+ Youths, we'll keep the laws of Venus,
+ And with joy and mirth between us
+ Live and love like Paris wight!
+
+The next has the same accent of gladness, though it is tuned to a
+somewhat softer and more meditative note of feeling.
+
+
+
+
+THE SWEETNESS OF THE SPRING.
+
+No. 13.
+
+
+ Vernal hours are sweet as clover,
+ With love's honey running over;
+ Every heart on this earth burning
+ Finds new birth with spring's returning.
+
+ In the spring-time blossoms flourish,
+ Fields drink moisture, heaven's dews nourish;
+ Now the griefs of maidens, after
+ Dark days, turn to love and laughter.
+
+ Whoso love, are loved, together
+ Seek their pastime in spring weather;
+ And, with time and place agreeing,
+ Clasp, kiss, frolic, far from seeing.
+
+Gradually the form of the one girl whom the lyrist loves emerges from
+this wealth of description.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUIT TO PHYLLIS.
+
+No. 14.
+
+
+ Hail! thou longed-for month of May,
+ Dear to lovers every day!
+ Thou that kindlest hour by hour
+ Life in man and bloom in bower!
+ O ye crowds of flowers and hues
+ That with joy the sense confuse,
+ Hail! and to our bosom bring
+ Bliss and every jocund thing!
+ Sweet the concert of the birds;
+ Lovers listen to their words:
+ For sad winter hath gone by,
+ And a soft wind blows on high.
+
+ Earth hath donned her purple vest,
+ Fields with laughing flowers are dressed,
+ Shade upon the wild wood spreads,
+ Trees lift up their leafy heads;
+ Nature in her joy to-day
+ Bids all living things be gay;
+ Glad her face and fair her grace
+ Underneath the sun's embrace!
+ Venus stirs the lover's brain,
+ With life's nectar fills his vein,
+ Pouring through his limbs the heat
+ Which makes pulse and passion beat.
+
+ O how happy was the birth
+ When the loveliest soul on earth
+ Took the form and life of thee,
+ Shaped in all felicity!
+ O how yellow is thy hair!
+ There is nothing wrong, I swear,
+ In the whole of thee; thou art
+ Framed to fill a loving heart!
+ Lo, thy forehead queenly crowned,
+ And the eyebrows dark and round,
+ Curved like Iris at the tips,
+ Down the dark heavens when she slips!
+
+ Red as rose and white as snow
+ Are thy cheeks that pale and glow;
+ 'Mid a thousand maidens thou
+ Hast no paragon, I vow.
+ Round thy lips and red as be
+ Apples on the apple-tree;
+ Bright thy teeth as any star;
+ Soft and low thy speeches are;
+ Long thy hand, and long thy side,
+ And the throat thy breasts divide;
+ All thy form beyond compare
+ Was of God's own art the care.
+
+ Sparks of passion sent from thee
+ Set on fire the heart of me;
+ Thee beyond all whom I know
+ I must love for ever so.
+ Lo, my heart to dust will burn
+ Unless thou this flame return;
+ Still the fire will last, and I,
+ Living now, at length shall die!
+ Therefore, Phyllis, hear me pray,
+ Let us twain together play,
+ Joining lip to lip and breast
+ Unto, breast in perfect rest!
+
+The lover is occasionally bashful, sighing at a distance.
+
+
+
+
+MODEST LOVE.
+
+No. 15.
+
+
+ Summer sweet is coming in;
+ Now the pleasant days begin;
+ Phoebus rules the earth at last;
+ For sad winter's reign is past.
+
+ Wounded with the love alone
+ Of one girl, I make my moan:
+ Grief pursues me till she bend
+ Unto me and condescend.
+
+ Take thou pity on my plight!
+ With my heart thy heart unite!
+ In my love thy own love blending,
+ Finding thus of life the ending!
+
+Occasionally his passion assumes a romantic tone, as is the case with
+the following _Serenade_ to a girl called Flos-de-spina in the Latin.
+Whether that was her real name, or was only used for poetical
+purposes, does not admit of debate now. Anyhow, Flos-de-spina,
+Fior-di-spina, Fleur-d'epine, and English Flower-o'-the-thorn are all
+of them pretty names for a girl.
+
+
+
+
+THE SERENADE TO FLOWER-O'-THE-THORN.
+
+No. 16.
+
+
+ The blithe young year is upward steering.
+ Wild winter dwindles, disappearing;
+ The short, short days are growing longer,
+ Rough weather yields and warmth is stronger.
+ Since January dawned, my mind
+ Waves hither, thither, love-inclined
+ For one whose will can loose or bind.
+
+ Prudent and very fair the maiden,
+ Than rose or lily more love-laden;
+ Stately of stature, lithe and slender,
+ There's naught so exquisite and tender.
+ The Queen of France is not so dear;
+ Death to my life comes very near
+ If Flower-o'-the-thorn be not my cheer.
+
+ The Queen of Love my heart is killing
+ With her gold arrow pain-distilling;
+ The God of Love with torches burning
+ Lights pyre on pyre of ardent yearning.
+ She is the girl for whom I'd die;
+ I want none dearer, far or nigh,
+ Though grief on grief upon me lie.
+
+ I with her love am thralled and taken,
+ Whose flower doth flower, bud, bloom, and waken;
+ Sweet were the labour, light the burden,
+ Could mouth kiss mouth for wage and guerdon.
+ No touch of lips my wound can still,
+ Unless two hearts grow one, one will,
+ One longing! Flower of flowers, farewell!
+
+Once at least we find him writing in absence to his mistress, and
+imploring her fidelity. This ranks among the most delicate in
+sentiment of the whole series.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVE-LETTER IN SPRING.
+
+No. 17.
+
+
+ Now the sun is streaming,
+ Clear and pure his ray;
+ April's glad face beaming
+ On our earth to-day.
+ Unto love returneth
+ Every gentle mind;
+ And the boy-god burneth
+ Jocund hearts to bind.
+
+ All this budding beauty,
+ Festival array,
+ Lays on us the duty
+ To be blithe and gay.
+ Trodden ways are known, love!
+ And in this thy youth,
+ To retain thy own love
+ Were but faith and truth.
+
+ In faith love me solely,
+ Mark the faith of me,
+ From thy whole heart wholly,
+ From the soul of thee.
+ At this time of bliss, dear,
+ I am far away;
+ Those who love like this, dear,
+ Suffer every day!
+
+At one time he seems upon the point of clasping his felicity.
+
+
+
+
+A SPRING DITTY.
+
+No. 18.
+
+
+ In the spring, ah happy day!
+ Underneath a leafy spray
+ With her sister stands my may.
+ O sweet love!
+ He who now is reft of thee
+ Poor is he!
+
+ Ah, the trees, how fair they flower
+ Birds are singing in the bower;
+ Maidens feel of love the power.
+ O sweet love!
+
+ See the lilies, how they blow!
+ And the maidens row by row
+ Praise the best of gods below.
+ O sweet love!
+
+ If I held my sweetheart now,
+ In the wood beneath the bough,
+ I would kiss her, lip and brow.
+ O sweet love!
+ He who now is reft of thee,
+ Poor is he!
+
+At another time he has clasped it, but he trembles lest it should
+escape him.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE-DOUBTS.
+
+No. 19.
+
+
+ With so sweet a promise given
+ All my bosom burneth;
+ Hope uplifts my heart to heaven,
+ Yet the doubt returneth,
+ Lest perchance that hope should be
+ Crushed and shattered suddenly.
+
+ On one girl my fancy so,
+ On one star, reposes;
+ Her sweet lips with honey flow
+ And the scent of roses:
+ In her smile I laugh, and fire
+ Fills me with her love's desire.
+
+ Love in measure over-much
+ Strikes man's soul with anguish;
+ Anxious love's too eager touch
+ Makes man fret and languish:
+ Thus in doubt and grief I pine;
+ Pain more sure was none than mine.
+
+ Burning in love's fiery flood,
+ Lo, my life is wasted!
+ Such the fever of my blood
+ That I scarce have tasted
+ Mortal bread and wine, but sup
+ Like a god love's nectar-cup.
+
+The village dance forms an important element in the pleasures of the
+season. Here is a pretty picture in two stanzas of a linden sheltering
+some Suabian meadow.
+
+
+
+
+THE VILLAGE DANCE.
+
+No. 20.
+
+
+ Wide the lime-tree to the air
+ Spreads her boughs and foliage fair;
+ Thyme beneath is growing
+ On the verdant meadow-where
+ Dancers' feet are going.
+
+ Through the grass a little spring
+ Runs with jocund murmuring;
+ All the place rejoices;
+ Cooling zephyrs breathe and sing
+ With their summer voices.
+
+I have freely translated a second, which presents a more elaborate
+picture of a similar scene.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE AMONG THE MAIDENS.
+
+No. 21.
+
+
+ Yonder choir of virgins see
+ Through the spring advancing,
+ Where the sun's warmth, fair and free,
+ From the green leaves glancing,
+ Weaves a lattice of light gloom
+ And soft sunbeams o'er us,
+ 'Neath the linden-trees in bloom,
+ For the Cyprian chorus.
+
+ In this vale where blossoms blow,
+ Blooming, summer-scented,
+ 'Mid the lilies row by row,
+ Spreads a field flower-painted.
+ Here the blackbirds through the dale
+ Each to each are singing,
+ And the jocund nightingale
+ Her fresh voice is flinging.
+
+ See the maidens crowned with rose
+ Sauntering through the grasses!
+ Who could tell the mirth of those
+ Laughing, singing lasses?
+ Or with what a winning grace
+ They their charms discover,
+ Charms of form and blushing face,
+ To the gazing lover?
+
+ Down the flowery greenwood glade
+ As I chanced to wander,
+ From bright eyes a serving-maid
+ Shot Love's arrows yonder;
+ I for her, 'mid all the crew
+ Of the girls of Venus,
+ Wait and yearn until I view
+ Love spring up between us.
+
+Another lyric of complicated rhyming structure introduces a not
+dissimilar motive, with touches that seem, in like manner, to indicate
+its German origin. It may be remarked that the lover's emotion has
+here unusual depth, a strain of _sehnsucht_; and the picture of the
+mother followed by her daughter in the country-dance suggests the
+domesticity of Northern races.
+
+
+
+
+AT THE VILLAGE DANCE.
+
+No. 22.
+
+
+ Meadows bloom, in Winter's room
+ Reign the Loves and Graces,
+ With their gift of buds that lift
+ Bright and laughing faces;
+ 'Neath the ray of genial May,
+ Shining, glowing, blushing, growing,
+ They the joys of spring are showing
+ In their manifold array.
+
+ Song-birds sweet the season greet,
+ Tune their merry voices;
+ Sound the ways with hymns of praise,
+ Every lane rejoices.
+ On the bough in greenwood now
+ Flowers are springing, perfumes flinging,
+ While young men and maids are clinging
+ To the loves they scarce avow.
+
+ O'er the grass together pass
+ Bands of lads love-laden:
+ Row by row in bevies go
+ Bride and blushing maiden.
+ See with glee 'neath linden-tree,
+ Where the dancing girls are glancing,
+ How the matron is advancing!
+ At her side her daughter see!
+
+ She's my own, for whom alone,
+ If fate wills, I'll tarry;
+ Young May-moon, or late or soon,
+ 'Tis with her I'd marry!
+ Now with sighs I watch her rise,
+ She the purely loved, the surely
+ Chosen, who my heart securely
+ Turns from grief to Paradise.
+
+ In her sight with heaven's own light
+ Like the gods I blossom;
+ Care for nought till she be brought
+ Yielding to my bosom.
+ Thirst divine my soul doth pine
+ To behold her and enfold her,
+ With clasped arms alone to hold her
+ In Love's holy hidden shrine.
+
+But the theme of the dance is worked up with even greater elaboration
+and a more studied ingenuity of rhyme and rhythm in the following
+characteristic song. This has the true accent of what may be called
+the _Musa Vagabundula_, and is one of the best lyrics of the
+series:--
+
+
+
+
+INVITATION TO THE DANCE.
+
+No. 23.
+
+
+ Cast aside dull books and thought;
+ Sweet is folly, sweet is play:
+ Take the pleasure Spring hath brought
+ In youth's opening holiday!
+ Right it is old age should ponder
+ On grave matters fraught with care;
+ Tender youth is free to wander,
+ Free to frolic light as air.
+ Like a dream our prime is flown,
+ Prisoned in a study:
+ Sport and folly are youth's own,
+ Tender youth and ruddy.
+
+ Lo, the Spring of life slips by,
+ Frozen Winter comes apace;
+ Strength is 'minished silently,
+ Care writes wrinkles on our face:
+ Blood dries up and courage fails us,
+ Pleasures dwindle, joys decrease,
+ Till old age at length assails us
+ With his troop of illnesses.
+ Like a dream our prime is flown,
+ Prisoned in a study;
+ Sport and folly are youth's own,
+ Tender youth and ruddy.
+
+ Live we like the gods above;
+ This is wisdom, this is truth:
+ Chase the joys of tender love
+ In the leisure of our youth!
+ Keep the vows we swore together,
+ Lads, obey that ordinance;
+ Seek the fields in sunny weather,
+ Where the laughing maidens dance.
+ Like a dream our prime is flown,
+ Prisoned in a study;
+ Sport and folly are youth's own,
+ Tender youth and ruddy.
+
+ There the lad who lists may see
+ Which among the maids is kind:
+ There young limbs deliciously
+ Flashing through the dances wind:
+ While the girls their arms are raising,
+ Moving, winding o'er the lea,
+ Still I stand and gaze, and gazing
+ They have stolen the soul of me!
+ Like a dream our prime is flown,
+ Prisoned in a study;
+ Sport and folly are youth's own,
+ Tender youth and ruddy.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+
+A separate Section can be devoted to songs in the manner of the early
+French pastoral. These were fashionable at a remote period in all
+parts of Europe; and I have already had occasion, in another piece of
+literary history, to call attention to the Italian madrigals of the
+fourteenth century composed in this species.[30] Their point is mainly
+this: A man of birth and education, generally a dweller in the town,
+goes abroad into the fields, lured by fair spring weather, and makes
+love among trees to a country wench.
+
+The _Vagi_ turn the pastoral to their own purpose, and always
+represent the greenwood lover as a _clericus_. One of these rural
+nieces has a pretty opening stanza:--
+
+ "When the sweet Spring was ascending,
+ Not yet May, at April's ending,
+ While the sun was heavenward wending,
+ Stood a girl of grace transcending
+ Underneath the green bough, sending
+ Songs aloft with pipings."
+
+Another gives a slightly comic turn to the chief incident.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 30: See _Renaissance in Italy_, vol. iv. p. 156.]
+
+
+
+
+A PASTORAL.
+
+No. 24.
+
+
+ There went out in the dawning light
+ A little rustic maiden;
+ Her flock so white, her crook so slight,
+ With fleecy new wool laden.
+
+ Small is the flock, and there you'll see
+ The she-ass and the wether;
+ This goat's a he, and that's a she,
+ The bull-calf and the heifer.
+
+ She looked upon the green sward, where
+ A student lay at leisure:
+ "What do you there, young sir, so fair?"
+ "Come, play with me, my treasure!"
+
+A third seems to have been written in the South, perhaps upon the
+shores of one of the Italian lakes--Como or Garda.
+
+
+
+
+THE MULBERRY-GATHERER.
+
+No. 25.
+
+
+ In the summer's burning heat,
+ When the flowers were blooming sweet,
+ I had chosen, as 'twas meet,
+ 'Neath an olive bough my seat;
+ Languid with the glowing day,
+ Lazy, careless, apt for play.
+
+ Stood the tree in fields where grew
+ Painted flowers of every hue,
+ Grass that flourished with the dew,
+ Fresh with shade where breezes blew;
+ Plato, with his style so rare,
+ Could not paint a spot more fair.
+
+ Runs a babbling brook hard by,
+ Chants the nightingale on high;
+ Water-nymphs with song reply.
+ "Sure, 'tis Paradise," I cry;
+ For I know not any place
+ Of a sweeter, fresher grace.
+
+ While I take my solace here,
+ And in solace find good cheer,
+ Shade from summer, coolness dear,
+ Comes a shepherd maiden near--
+ Fairer, sure, there breathes not now--
+ Plucking mulberries from the bough.
+
+ Seeing her, I loved her there:
+ Venus did the trick, I'll swear!
+ "Come, I am no thief, to scare,
+ Rob, or murder unaware;
+ I and all I have are thine,
+ Thou than Flora more divine!"
+
+ But the girl made answer then:
+ "Never played I yet with men;
+ Cruel to me are my kin:
+ My old mother scolds me when
+ In some little thing I stray:--
+ Hold, I prithee, sir, to-day!"
+
+A fourth, consisting of a short conventional introduction in praise of
+Spring, followed by a dialogue between a young man and a girl, in
+which the metre changes for the last two stanzas, may be classed among
+the pastorals, although it is a somewhat irregular example of the
+species.
+
+
+
+
+THE WOOING.
+
+No. 26.
+
+
+ All the woods are now in flower,
+ Song-birds sing in field and bower,
+ Orchards their white blossoms shower:
+ Lads, make merry in Love's hour!
+
+ Sordid grief hath flown away,
+ Fervid Love is here to-day;
+ He will tame without delay
+ Those who love not while they may.
+
+_He._
+ "Fairest maiden, list to me;
+ Do not thus disdainful be;
+ Scorn and anger disagree
+ With thy youth, and injure thee.
+
+ "I am weaker than thou art;
+ Mighty Love hath pierced my heart;
+ Scarce can I endure his dart:
+ Lest I die, heal, heal my smart!"
+
+_She._
+ "Why d'you coax me, suitor blind?
+ What you seek you will not find;
+ I'm too young for love to bind;
+ Such vain trifles vex my mind.
+
+ "Is't your will with me to toy?
+ I'll not mate with man or boy:
+ Like the Phoenix, to enjoy
+ Single life shall be my joy."
+
+_He._
+ "Yet Love is tyrannous,
+ Harsh, fierce, imperious!
+ He who man's heart can thus
+ Shatter, may make to bow
+ Maidens as stern as thou!"
+
+_She._
+ "Now by your words I'm 'ware
+ What you wish, what you are;
+ You know love well, I swear!
+ So I'll be loved by you;
+ Now I'm on fire too!"
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+
+Some semi-descriptive pieces, which connect the songs of Spring with
+lyrics of a more purely personal emotion, can boast of rare beauty in
+the original.
+
+The most striking of these, upon the theme of Sleep and Love, I have
+tried to render in trochaic verse, feeling it impossible, without
+knowledge of the medieval melody, to reproduce its complicated and now
+only half-intelligible rhythms.
+
+
+
+
+A DESCANT UPON SLEEP AND LOVE.
+
+No. 27.
+
+
+ When the lamp of Cynthia late
+ Rises in her silver state,
+ Through her brother's roseate light,
+ Blushing on the brows of night;
+ Then the pure ethereal air
+ Breathes with zephyr blowing fair;
+ Clouds and vapours disappear.
+ As with chords of lute or lyre,
+ Soothed the spirits now respire,
+ And the heart revives again
+ Which once more for love is fain.
+ But the orient evening star
+ Sheds with influence kindlier far
+ Dews of sweet sleep on the eye
+ Of o'er-tired mortality.
+
+ Oh, how blessed to take and keep
+ Is the antidote of sleep!
+ Sleep that lulls the storms of care
+ And of sorrow unaware,
+ Creeping through the closed doors
+ Of the eyes, and through the pores
+ Breathing bliss so pure and rare
+ That with love it may compare.
+
+ Then the god of dreams doth bring
+ To the mind some restful thing,
+ Breezes soft that rippling blow
+ O'er ripe cornfields row by row,
+ Murmuring rivers round whose brim
+ Silvery sands the swallows skim,
+ Or the drowsy circling sound
+ Of old mill-wheels going round,
+ Which with music steal the mind
+ And the eyes in slumber bind.
+
+ When the deeds of love are done
+ Which bland Venus had begun,
+ Languor steals with pleasant strain
+ Through the chambers of the brain,
+ Eyes 'neath eyelids gently tired
+ Swim and seek the rest desired.
+ How deliriously at last
+ Into slumber love hath passed!
+ But how sweeter yet the way
+ Which leads love again to play!
+
+ From the soothed limbs upward spread
+ Glides a mist divinely shed,
+ Which invades the heart and head:
+ Drowsily it veils the eyes,
+ Bending toward sleep's paradise,
+ And with curling vapour round
+ Fills the lids, the senses swound,
+ Till the visual ray is bound
+ By those ministers which make
+ Life renewed in man awake.
+
+ Underneath the leafy shade
+ Of a tree in quiet laid,
+ While the nightingale complains
+ Singing of her ancient pains,
+ Sweet it is still hours to pass,
+ But far sweeter on the grass
+ With a buxom maid to play
+ All a summer's holiday.
+ When the scent of herb and flower
+ Breathes upon the silent hour,
+ When the rose with leaf and bloom
+ Spreads a couch of pure perfume,
+ Then the grateful boon of sleep
+ Falls with satisfaction deep,
+ Showering dews our eyes above,
+ Tired with honeyed strife of love.
+
+ In how many moods the mind
+ Of poor lovers, weak and blind,
+ Wavers like the wavering wind!
+ As a ship in darkness lost,
+ Without anchor tempest-tossed,
+ So with hope and fear imbued
+ It roams in great incertitude
+ Love's tempestuous ocean-flood.
+
+A portion of this descant finds an echo in another lyric of the
+_Carmina Burana_:--
+
+ "With young leaves the wood is new;
+ Now the nightingale is singing;
+ And field-flowers of every hue
+ On the sward their bloom are flinging.
+ Sweet it is to brush the dew
+ From wild lawns and woody places!
+ Sweeter yet to wreathe the rose
+ With the lily's virgin graces;
+ But the sweetest sweet man knows,
+ Is to woo a girl's embraces."
+
+The most highly wrought of descriptive poems in this species is the
+_Dispute of Flora and Phyllis_, which occurs both in the _Carmina
+Burana_ and in the English MSS. edited by Wright. The motive of the
+composition is as follows:--Two girls wake in the early morning, and
+go out to walk together through the fields. Each of them is in love;
+but Phyllis loves a soldier, Flora loves a scholar. They interchange
+confidences, the one contending with the other for the superiority of
+her own sweetheart.
+
+Having said so much, I will present the first part of the poem in the
+English version I have made.
+
+
+
+
+FLORA AND PHYLLIS.
+
+PART I.
+
+No. 28.
+
+
+ In the spring-time, when the skies
+ Cast off winter's mourning,
+ And bright flowers of every hue
+ Earth's lap are adorning,
+ At the hour when Lucifer
+ Gives the stars their warning,
+ Phyllis woke, and Flora too,
+ In the early morning.
+
+ Both the girls were fain to go
+ Forth in sunny weather,
+ For love-laden bosoms throw
+ Sleep off like a feather;
+ Then with measured steps and slow
+ To the fields together
+ Went they, seeking pastime new
+ 'Mid the flowers and heather.
+
+ Both were virgins, both, I ween,
+ Were by birth princesses;
+ Phyllis let her locks flow free,
+ Flora trained her tresses.
+ Not like girls they went, but like
+ Heavenly holinesses;
+ And their faces shone like dawn
+ 'Neath the day's caresses.
+
+ Equal beauty, equal birth,
+ These fair maidens mated;
+ Youthful were the years of both,
+ And their minds elated;
+ Yet they were a pair unpaired,
+ Mates by strife unmated;
+ For one loved a clerk, and one
+ For a knight was fated.
+
+ Naught there was of difference
+ 'Twixt them to the seeing,
+ All alike, within without,
+ Seemed in them agreeing;
+ With one garb, one cast of mind,
+ And one mode of being,
+ Only that they could not love
+ Save with disagreeing.
+
+ In the tree-tops overhead
+ A spring breeze was blowing,
+ And the meadow lawns around
+ With green grass were growing;
+ Through the grass a rivulet
+ From the hill was flowing,
+ Lively, with a pleasant sound
+ Garrulously going.
+
+ That the girls might suffer less
+ From the noon resplendent,
+ Near the stream a spreading pine
+ Rose with stem ascendant;
+ Crowned with boughs and leaves aloft,
+ O'er the fields impendent;
+ From all heat on every hand
+ Airily defendent.
+
+ On the sward the maidens sat,
+ Naught that seat surpasses;
+ Phyllis near the rivulet,
+ Flora 'mid the grasses;
+ Each into the chamber sweet
+ Of her own soul passes,
+ Love divides their thoughts, and wounds
+ With his shafts the lasses.
+
+ Love within the breast of each,
+ Hidden, unsuspected,
+ Lurks and draws forth sighs of grief
+ From their hearts dejected:
+ Soon their ruddy cheeks grow pale,
+ Conscious, love-affected;
+ Yet their passion tells no tale,
+ By soft shame protected.
+
+ Phyllis now doth overhear
+ Flora softly sighing:
+ Flora with like luck detects
+ Sigh to sigh replying.
+ Thus the girls exchange the game,
+ Each with other vying;
+ Till the truth leaps out at length,
+ Plain beyond denying.
+
+ Long this interchange did last
+ Of mute conversation;
+ All of love-sighs fond and fast
+ Was that dissertation.
+ Love was in their minds, and Love
+ Made their lips his station;
+ Phyllis then, while Flora smiled,
+ Opened her oration.
+
+ "Soldier brave, my love!" she said,
+ "Where is now my Paris?
+ Fights he in the field, or where
+ In the wide word tarries?
+ Oh, the soldier's life, I swear,
+ All life's glory carries;
+ Only valour clothed in arms
+ With Dame Venus marries!"
+
+Phyllis thus opens the question whether a soldier or a scholar be the
+fitter for love. Flora responds, and for some time they conduct the
+dispute in true scholastic fashion. Being unable to settle it between
+themselves, they resolve to seek out Love himself, and to refer the
+matter to his judgment. One girl mounts a mule, the other a horse; and
+these are no ordinary animals, for Neptune reared one beast as a
+present to Venus, Vulcan forged the metal-work of bit and saddle,
+Minerva embroidered the trappings, and so forth. After a short journey
+they reach the Garden of Love, which is described with a truly
+luxuriant wealth of imagery. It resembles some of the earlier
+Renaissance pictures, especially one of great excellence by a German
+artist which I once saw in a dealer's shop at Venice, and which ought
+now to grace a public gallery.
+
+
+
+
+FLORA AND PHYLLIS.
+
+PART III.
+
+No. 29.
+
+
+ On their steeds the ladies ride,
+ Two fair girls and slender;
+ Modest are their eyes and mild,
+ And their cheeks are tender.
+ Thus young lilies break the sheath,
+ Budding roses render
+ Blushes, and twinned pairs of stars
+ Climb the heavens with splendour.
+
+ Toward Love's Paradise they fare,
+ Such, I ween, their will is;
+ While the strife between the pair
+ Turns their cheeks to lilies;
+ Phyllis Flora flouts, and fair
+ Flora flouteth Phyllis;
+ Flora's hand a hawk doth bear,
+ And a goshawk Phyllis.
+
+ After a short space they came
+ Where a grove was growing;
+ At the entrance of the same
+ Rills with murmur flowing;
+ There the wind with myrrh and spice
+ Redolent was blowing,
+ Sounds of timbrel, harp, and lyre
+ Through the branches going.
+
+ All the music man could make
+ There they heard in plenty;
+ Timbrel, psaltery, lyre, and lute,
+ Harp and viol dainty;
+ Voices that in part-song meet
+ Choiring forte, lente;
+ Sounds the diatesseron,
+ Sounds the diapente.
+
+ All the tongues of all the birds
+ With full cry were singing;
+ There the blackbird's melody
+ Sweet and true was ringing;
+ Wood-dove, lark, and thrush on high
+ Jocund anthems flinging,
+ With the nightingale, who still
+ To her grief was clinging.
+
+ When the girls drew nigh the grove,
+ Some fear came upon them;
+ Further as they fared, the charm
+ Of the pleasance won them;
+ All the birds so sweetly sang
+ That a spell was on them,
+ And their bosoms warmed with love
+ At the welcome shown them.
+
+ Man would be immortal if
+ He could there be dwelling:
+ Every branch on every tree
+ With ripe fruit is swelling;
+ All the ways with nard and myrrh
+ And with spice are smelling:
+ How divine the Master is
+ All the house is telling.
+
+ Blithesome bands arrest their gaze,
+ Youths and maidens dancing;
+ Bodies beauteous as the stars,
+ Eyes with heaven's light glancing
+ And the bosoms of the girls,
+ At the sight entrancing,
+ Leap to view such marvels new,
+ Joy with joy enhancing!
+
+ They their horses check, and light,
+ Moved with sudden pleasure;
+ Half forget what brought them here,
+ Thralled by love and leisure;
+ Till once more the nightingale
+ Tuned her thrilling measure;
+ At that cry each girl again
+ Hugs her hidden treasure.
+
+ Round the middle of the grove
+ Was a place enchanted,
+ Which the god for his own rites
+ Specially had planted;
+ Fauns and nymphs and satyrs here
+ Flowery alleys haunted,
+ And before the face of Love
+ Played and leaped and chaunted.
+
+ In their hands they carry thyme,
+ Crowns of fragrant roses;
+ Bacchus leads the choir divine
+ And the dance composes;
+ Nymphs and fauns with feet in tune
+ Interchange their posies;
+ But Silenus trips and reels
+ When the chorus closes.
+
+ On an ass the elder borne
+ All the mad crew guideth;
+ Mirth and laughter at the view
+ Through Love's glad heart glideth.
+ "Io!" shouts the eld; that sound
+ In his throat subsideth,
+ For his voice in wine is drowned,
+ And his old age chideth.
+
+ 'Mid these pleasant sights appears
+ Love, the young joy-giver;
+ Bright as stars his eyes, and wings
+ On his shoulders shiver;
+ In his left hand is the bow,
+ At his side the quiver;
+ From his state the world may know
+ He is lord for ever.
+
+ Leans the boy upon a staff
+ Intertwined with flowers,
+ Scent of nectar from his hair
+ Breathes around the bowers;
+ Hand in hand before him kneel
+ Three celestial Hours,
+ Graces who Love's goblet fill
+ From immortal showers.
+
+It would surely be superfluous to point out the fluent elegance of
+this poem, or to dwell farther upon the astonishing fact that anything
+so purely Renaissance in tone should have been produced in the twelfth
+century.
+
+Cupid, as was natural, settles the dispute of the two girls by
+deciding that scholars are more suitable for love than soldiers.
+
+This would be the place to introduce another long descriptive poem, if
+the nature of its theme rendered it fit for translation. It relates
+the visit of a student to what he calls the _Templum Veneris_; in
+other words, to the house of a courtesan. Her attendants are sirens;
+and the whole poem, dealing with a vulgar incident, is conducted in
+this mock-heroic strain.[31]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 31: _Carmina Burana_, p. 138.]
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+We pass now to love-poems of a more purely personal kind. One of
+these, which is too long for translation and in some respects
+ill-suited to a modern taste, forms the proper transition from the
+descriptive to the lyrical section. It starts with phrases culled from
+hymns to the Virgin:--
+
+ "Si linguis angelicis
+ Loquar et humanis."
+
+ "Ave formosissima,
+ Gemma pretiosa;
+ Ave decus virginum,
+ Virgo gloriosa!"
+
+These waifs and strays of religious diction are curiously blent with
+romantic and classical allusions. The girl is addressed in the same
+breath as--
+
+ "Blanziflor et Helena,
+ Venus generosa."
+
+Toward the close of the poem, the lover, who at length has reached the
+object of his heart's desire, breaks into this paean of victorious
+passion:--
+
+ "What more? Around the maiden's neck
+ My arms I flung with yearning;
+ Upon her lips I gave and took
+ A thousand kisses burning:
+ Again and yet again I cried,
+ With whispered vows and sighing,
+ This, this alone, sure, sure it was
+ For which my heart was dying!
+
+ "Who is the man that does not know
+ The sweets that followed after?
+ My former pains, my sobs and woe,
+ Were changed for love and laughter:
+ The joys of Paradise were ours
+ In overflowing measure;
+ We tasted every shape of bliss
+ And every form of pleasure."
+
+The next piece which I shall quote differs in some important respects
+from the general style adopted by the Goliardi in their love-poetry.
+It is written in rhyming or leonine hexameters, and is remarkable for
+its quaint play on names, conceived and executed in a truly medieval
+taste.
+
+
+
+
+FLOS FLORAE.
+
+No. 30.
+
+
+ Take thou this rose, O Rose! the loves in the rose repose:
+ I with love of the rose am caught at the winter's close:
+ Take thou this flower, my flower, and cherish it in thy bower:
+ Thou in thy beauty's power shalt lovelier blow each hour:
+ Gaze at the rose, and smile, my rose, in mine eyes the while:
+ To thee the roses belong, thy voice is the nightingale's song:
+ Give thou the rose a kiss, it blushes like thy mouth's bliss:
+ Flowers in a picture seem not flowers, but flowers in a dream:
+ Who paints the rose's bloom, paints not the rose's perfume.
+
+In complete contrast to this conceited and euphuistic style of
+composition stands a slight snatch of rustic melody, consisting of
+little but reiteration and refrain.
+
+
+
+
+A BIRD'S SONG OF LOVE.
+
+No. 31.
+
+
+ Come to me, come, O come!
+ Let me not die, but come!
+ Hyria hysria nazaza
+ Trillirivos.
+
+ Fair is thy face, O fair!
+ Fair thine eyes, O how fair!
+ Hyria hysria nazaza
+ Trillirivos.
+
+ Fair is thy flowing hair!
+ O fair, O fair, how fair!
+ Hyria hysria nazaza
+ Trillirivos.
+
+ Redder than rose art thou,
+ Whiter than lily thou!
+ Hyria hysria nazaza
+ Trillirivos.
+
+ Fairer than all, I vow,
+ Ever my pride art thou!
+ Hyria hysria nazaza
+ Trillirivos.
+
+The following displays an almost classical intensity of voluptuous
+passion, and belongs in all probability to a period later than the
+_Carmina Burana_. I have ventured, in translating it, to borrow the
+structure of a song which occurs in Fletcher's _Rollo_ (act v. scene
+2), the first stanza of which is also found in Shakespeare's _Measure
+for Measure_ (act iv. scene 1), and to insert one or two phrases from
+Fletcher's version. Whether the composer of that song had ever met
+with the Latin lyric to Lydia can scarcely form the subject of
+critical conjecture. Yet there is a faint evanescent resemblance
+between the two poems.
+
+
+
+
+TO LYDIA.
+
+No. 32.
+
+
+ Lydia bright, thou girl more white
+ Than the milk of morning new,
+ Or young lilies in the light!
+ Matched with thy rose-whiteness, hue
+ Of red rose or white rose pales,
+ And the polished ivory fails,
+ Ivory fails.
+
+ Spread, O spread, my girl, thy hair,
+ Amber-hued and heavenly bright,
+ As fine gold or golden air!
+ Show, O show thy throat so white,
+ Throat and neck that marble fine
+ Over thy white breasts incline,
+ Breasts incline.
+
+ Lift, O lift thine eyes that are
+ Underneath those eyelids dark,
+ Lustrous as the evening star
+ 'Neath the dark heaven's purple arc!
+ Bare, O bare thy cheeks of rose,
+ Dyed with Tyrian red that glows,
+ Red that glows.
+
+ Give, O give those lips of love
+ That the coral boughs eclipse;
+ Give sweet kisses, dove by dove,
+ Soft descending on my lips.
+ See my soul how forth she flies!
+ 'Neath each kiss my pierced heart dies,
+ Pierced heart dies.
+
+ Wherefore dost thou draw my life,
+ Drain my heart's blood with thy kiss?
+ Scarce can I endure the strife
+ Of this ecstasy of bliss!
+ Set, O set my poor heart free,
+ Bound in icy chains by thee,
+ Chains by thee.
+
+ Hide, O hide those hills of snow,
+ Twinned upon thy breast that rise,
+ Where the virgin fountains flow
+ With fresh milk of Paradise!
+ Thy bare bosom breathes of myrrh,
+ From thy whole self pleasures stir,
+ Pleasures stir.
+
+ Hide, O hide those paps that tire
+ Sense and spirit with excess
+ Of snow-whiteness and desire
+ Of thy breast's deliciousness!
+ See'st thou, cruel, how I swoon?
+ Leav'st thou me half lost so soon?
+ Lost so soon?
+
+In rendering this lyric to Lydia, I have restored the fifth stanza,
+only one line of which,
+
+ "Quid mihi sugis vivum sanguinem,"
+
+remains in the original. This I did because it seemed necessary to
+effect the transition from the stanzas beginning _Pande, puella,
+pande_, to those beginning _Conde papillas, conde_.
+
+Among these more direct outpourings of personal passion, place may be
+found for a delicate little _Poem of Privacy_, which forms part of the
+_Carmina Burana_. Unfortunately, the text of this slight piece is very
+defective in the MS., and has had to be conjecturally restored in
+several places.
+
+
+
+
+A POEM OF PRIVACY.
+
+No. 33.
+
+
+ When a young man, passion-laden,
+ In a chamber meets a maiden,
+ Then felicitous communion,
+ By love's strain between the twain,
+ Grows from forth their union;
+ For the game, it hath no name,
+ Of lips, arms, and hidden charms.
+
+Nor can I here forbear from inserting another _Poem of Privacy_,
+bolder in its openness of speech, more glowing in its warmth of
+colouring. If excuse should be pleaded or the translation and
+reproduction of this distinctly Pagan ditty, it must be found in the
+singularity of its motive, which is as unmedieval as could be desired
+by the bitterest detractor of medieval sentiment. We seem, while
+reading it, to have before our eyes the Venetian picture of a Venus,
+while the almost prosaic particularity of description illustrates what
+I have said above about the detailed realism of the Goliardic style.
+
+
+
+
+FLORA.
+
+No. 34.
+
+
+ Rudely blows the winter blast,
+ Withered leaves are falling fast,
+ Cold hath hushed the birds at last.
+ While the heavens were warm and glowing,
+ Nature's offspring loved in May;
+ But man's heart no debt is owing
+ To such change of month or day
+ As the dumb brute-beasts obey.
+ Oh, the joys of this possessing!
+ How unspeakable the blessing
+ That my Flora yields to-day!
+
+ Labour long I did not rue,
+ Ere I won my wages due,
+ And the prize I played for drew.
+ Flora with her brows of laughter,
+ Gazing on me, breathing bliss,
+ Draws my yearning spirit after,
+ Sucks my soul forth in a kiss:
+ Where's the pastime matched with this?
+ Oh, the joys of this possessing!
+ How unspeakable the blessing
+ Of my Flora's loveliness!
+
+ Truly mine is no harsh doom,
+ While in this secluded room
+ Venus lights for me the gloom!
+ Flora faultless as a blossom
+ Bares her smooth limbs for mine eyes;
+ Softly shines her virgin bosom,
+ And the breasts that gently rise
+ Like the hills of Paradise.
+ Oh, the joys of this possessing!
+ How unspeakable the blessing
+ When my Flora is the prize!
+
+ From her tender breasts decline,
+ In a gradual curving line,
+ Flanks like swansdown white and fine.
+ On her skin the touch discerneth
+ Naught of rough; 'tis soft as snow:
+ 'Neath the waist her belly turneth
+ Unto fulness, where below
+ In Love's garden lilies blow.
+ Oh, the joys of this possessing!
+ How unspeakable the blessing!
+ Sweetest sweets from Flora flow!
+
+ Ah! should Jove but find my fair,
+ He would fall in love, I swear,
+ And to his old tricks repair:
+ In a cloud of gold descending
+ As on Danae's brazen tower,
+ Or the sturdy bull's back bending,
+ Or would veil his godhood's power
+ In a swan's form for one hour.
+ Oh, the joys of this possessing!
+ How unspeakable the blessing!
+ How divine my Flora's flower!
+
+A third "poem of privacy" may be employed to temper this too fervid
+mood. I conceive it to be meant for the monologue of a lover in the
+presence of his sweetheart, and to express the varying lights and
+shades of his emotion.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVER'S MONOLOGUE.
+
+No. 35.
+
+
+ Love rules everything that is:
+ Love doth change hearts in a kiss:
+ Love seeks devious ways of bliss:
+ Love than honey sweeter,
+ Love than gall more bitter.
+ Blind Love hath no modesties.
+ Love is lukewarm, fiery, cold;
+ Love is timid, overbold;
+ Loyal, treacherous, manifold.
+
+ Present time is fit for play:
+ Let Love find his mate to-day:
+ Hark, the birds, how sweet their lay!
+ Love rules young men wholly;
+ Love lures maidens solely.
+ Woe to old folk! sad are they.
+ Sweetest woman ever seen,
+ Fairest, dearest, is my queen;
+ And alas! my chiefest teen.
+
+ Let an old man, chill and drear,
+ Never come thy bosom near;
+ Oft he sleeps with sorry cheer,
+ Too cold to delight thee:
+ Naught could less invite thee.
+ Youth with youth must mate, my dear.
+ Blest the union I desire;
+ Naught I know and naught require,
+ Better than to be thy squire.
+
+ Love flies all the world around:
+ Love in wanton wiles is wound:
+ Therefore youth and maid are bound
+ In Love's fetters duly.
+ She is joyless truly
+ Who no lover yet hath found!
+ All the night in grief and smart
+ She must languish, wear her heart;
+ Bitter is that woman's part.
+
+ Love is simple, Love is sly;
+ Love is pale, of ruddy dye:
+ Love is all things, low and high:
+ Love is serviceable,
+ Constant and unstable:
+ Love obeys Art's empery.
+ In this closed room Love takes flight,
+ In the silence of the night,
+ Love made captive, conquered quite.
+
+The next is singularly, quaintly musical in the original, but for
+various reasons I have not been able to adhere exactly to its form. I
+imagine that it is the work of the same poet who composed the longer
+piece which I shall give immediately after. Both are addressed to
+Caecilia; I have used the name Phyllis in my version.
+
+
+
+
+THE INVITATION TO LOVE.
+
+No. 36.
+
+
+ List, my girl, with words I woo;
+ Lay not wanton hands on you:
+ Sit before you, in your face
+ Gazing, ah! and seeking grace:
+ Fix mine eyes, nor let them rove
+ From the mark where shafts of love
+ Their flight wing.
+ Try, my girl, O try what bliss
+ Young men render when they kiss!
+ Youth is alway sturdy, straight;
+ Old age totters in its gait.
+ These delights of love we bring
+ Have the suppleness of spring,
+ Softness, sweetness, wantoning;
+ Clasp, my Phyllis, in their ring
+ Sweeter sweets than poets sing,
+ Anything and everything!
+
+ After daytime's heat from heaven
+ Dews on thirsty fields are given;
+ After verdant leaf and stem
+ Shoots the white flower's diadem;
+ After the white flower's bloom
+ To the night their faint perfume
+ Lilies fling.
+ Try, my girl, etc., _da capo_.
+
+The poem, _Ludo cum Caecilia_, which comes next in order, is one of
+the most perfect specimens of Goliardic writing. To render its fluent,
+languid, and yet airy grace, in any language but the Latin, is, I
+think, impossible. Who could have imagined that the subtlety, the
+refinement, almost the perversity of feeling expressed in it, should
+have been proper to a student of the twelfth century? The poem is
+spoiled toward its close by astrological and grammatical conceits; and
+the text is corrupt. That part I have omitted, together with some
+stanzas which offend a modern taste.
+
+
+
+
+PHYLLIS.
+
+No. 37.
+
+
+ Think no evil, have no fear,
+ If I play with Phyllis;
+ I am but the guardian dear
+ Of her girlhood's lilies,
+ Lest too soon her bloom should swoon
+ Like spring's daffodillies.
+
+ All I care for is to play,
+ Gaze upon my treasure,
+ Now and then to touch her hand,
+ Kiss in modest measure;
+ But the fifth act of love's game,
+ Dream not of that pleasure!
+
+ For to touch the bloom of youth
+ Spoils its frail complexion;
+ Let the young grape gently grow
+ Till it reach perfection;
+ Hope within my heart doth glow
+ Of the girl's affection.
+
+ Sweet above all sweets that are
+ 'Tis to play with Phyllis;
+ For her thoughts are white as snow,
+ In her heart no ill is;
+ And the kisses that she gives
+ Sweeter are than lilies.
+
+ Love leads after him the gods
+ Bound in pliant traces;
+ Harsh and stubborn hearts he bends,
+ Breaks with blows of maces;
+ Nay, the unicorn is tamed
+ By a girl's embraces.
+
+ Love leads after him the gods,
+ Jupiter with Juno;
+ To his waxen measure treads
+ Masterful Neptune O!
+ Pluto stern to souls below
+ Melts to this one tune O!
+
+ Whatsoe'er the rest may do,
+ Let us then be playing:
+ Take the pastime that is due
+ While we're yet a-Maying;
+ I am young and young are you;
+ 'Tis the time for playing.
+
+Up to this time, the happiness of love returned and satisfied has been
+portrayed. The following lyric exhibits a lover pining at a distance,
+soothing his soul with song, and indulging in visions of happiness
+beyond his grasp--εἰδώλοις κάλλευς κῶφα χλιαινόμενος, as Meleager phrased it on a similar
+occasion.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE LONGINGS.
+
+No. 38.
+
+
+ With song I seek my fate to cheer,
+ As doth the swan when death draws near;
+ Youth's roses from my cheeks retire,
+ My heart is worn with fond desire.
+ Since care and woe increase and grow, while
+ light burns low,
+ Poor wretch I die!
+ Heigho! I die, poor wretch I die!
+ Constrained to love, unloved; such luck have I!
+
+ If she could love me whom I love,
+ I would not then exchange with Jove:
+ Ah! might I clasp her once, and drain
+ Her lips as thirsty flowers drink rain!
+ With death to meet, his welcome greet, from
+ life retreat,
+ I were full fain!
+ Heigho! full fain, I were full fain,
+ Could I such joy, such wealth of pleasure gain!
+
+ When I bethought me of her breast,
+ Those hills of snow my fancy pressed;
+ Longing to touch them with my hand,
+ Love's laws I then did understand.
+ Rose of the south, blooms on her mouth; I felt
+ love's drouth
+ That mouth to kiss!
+ Heigho! to kiss, that mouth to kiss!
+ Lost in day-dreams and vain desires of bliss.
+
+The next is the indignant repudiation by a lover of the calumny that
+he has proved unfaithful to his mistress. The strongly marked double
+rhymes of the original add peculiar vehemence to his protestations;
+while the abundance of cheap mythological allusions is emphatically
+Goliardic.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVER'S VOW.
+
+No. 39.
+
+
+ False the tongue and foul with slander,
+ Poisonous treacherous tongue of pander,
+ Tongue the hangman's knife should sever,
+ Tongue in flames to burn for ever;
+
+ Which hath called me a deceiver,
+ Faithless lover, quick to leave her,
+ Whom I love, and leave her slighted,
+ For another, unrequited!
+
+ Hear, ye Muses nine! nay, rather,
+ Jove, of gods and men the father!
+ Who for Danae and Europa
+ Changed thy shape, thou bold eloper!
+
+ Hear me, god! ye gods all, hear me!
+ Such a sin came never near me.
+ Hear, thou god! and gods all, hear ye!
+ Thus I sinned not, as I fear ye.
+
+ I by Mars vow, by Apollo,
+ Both of whom Love's learning follow;
+ Yea, by Cupid too, the terror
+ Of whose bow forbids all error!
+
+ By thy bow I vow and quiver,
+ By the shafts thou dost deliver,
+ Without fraud, in honour duly
+ To observe my troth-plight truly.
+
+ I will keep the troth I plighted,
+ And the reason shall be cited:
+ 'Tis that 'mid the girls no maiden
+ Ever met I more love-laden.
+
+ 'Mid the girls thou art beholden
+ Like a pearl in setting golden;
+ Yea, thy shoulder, neck, and bosom
+ Bear of beauty's self the blossom.
+
+ Oh, her throat, lips, forehead, nourish
+ Love, with food that makes him flourish!
+ And her curls, I did adore them--
+ They were blonde with heaven's light o'er them.
+
+ Therefore, till, for Nature's scorning,
+ Toil is rest and midnight morning,
+ Till no trees in woods are growing,
+ Till fire turns to water flowing;
+
+ Till seas have no ships to sail them,
+ Till the Parthians' arrows fail them,
+ I, my girl, will love thee ever,
+ Unbetrayed, betray thee never!
+
+In the following poem a lover bids adieu for ever to an unworthy
+woman, who has betrayed him. This is a remarkable specimen of the
+songs written for a complicated melody. The first eight lines seem set
+to one tune; in the next four that tune is slightly accelerated, and a
+double rhyme is substituted for a single one in the tenth and twelfth
+verses. The five concluding lines go to a different kind of melody,
+and express in each stanza a changed mood of feeling.
+
+I have tried in this instance to adopt the plaster-cast method of
+translation, as described above,[32] and have even endeavoured to
+obtain the dragging effect of the first eight lines of each strophe,
+which are composed neither of exact accentual dactyls nor yet of exact
+accentual anapaests, but offer a good example of that laxity of rhythm
+permitted in this prosody for music.
+
+Comparison with the original will show that I was not copying Byron's
+_When we Two Parted_; yet the resemblance between that song and the
+tone which my translation has naturally assumed from the Latin, is
+certainly noticeable. That Byron could have seen the piece before he
+wrote his own lines in question is almost impossible, for this portion
+of the _Carmina Burana_ had not, so far as I am aware, been edited
+before the year 1847. The coincidence of metrical form, so far as it
+extends, only establishes the spontaneity of emotion which, in the
+case of the medieval and the modern poet, found a similar rhythm for
+the utterance of similar feeling.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 32: Page 38.]
+
+
+
+
+FAREWELL TO THE FAITHLESS.
+
+No. 40.
+
+
+ A mortal anguish
+ How often woundeth me;
+ Grieving I languish,
+ Weighed down with misery;
+
+ Hearing the mournful
+ Tale of thy fault and fall
+ Blown by Fame's scornful
+ Trump to the ears of all!
+
+ Envious rumour
+ Late or soon will slay thee:
+ Love with less humour,
+ Lest thy love betray thee.
+
+ Whate'er thou dost, do secretly,
+ Far from Fame's curiosity;
+ Love in the dark delights to be,
+ His sports are wiles and witchery,
+ With laugh of lovers greeting.
+
+ Thou wert not slighted,
+ Stained in thine honour, when
+ We were united,
+ Lovers unknown to men;
+ But when thy passion
+ Grew like thy bosom cold,
+ None had compassion,
+ Then was thy story told.
+
+ Fame, who rejoiceth
+ New amours to utter,
+ Now thy shame voiceth,
+ Wide her pinions flutter.
+
+ The palace home of modesty
+ Is made a haunt for harlotry;
+ The virgin lily you may see
+ Defiled by fingers lewd and free,
+ With vile embraces meeting.
+
+ I mourn the tender
+ Flower of the youth of thee,
+ Brighter in splendour
+ Than evening's star can be.
+ Pure were thy kisses,
+ Dove-like thy smile;
+ As the snake hisses
+ Now is thy guile.
+
+ Lovers who pray thee
+ From thy door are scattered;
+ Lovers who pay thee
+ In thy bed are flattered.
+
+ Thou bidst them from thy presence flee
+ From whom thou canst not take thy fee;
+ Blind, halt, and lame thy suitors be;
+ Illustrious men with subtlety
+ And poisonous honey cheating.
+
+I may add that a long soliloquy printed in _Carmina Burana_, pp.
+119-121, should be compared with the foregoing lyric. It has a similar
+motive, though the lover in this case expresses his willingness for
+reconciliation. One part of its expostulation with the faithless
+woman is beautiful in its simplicity:--
+
+ "Amaveram prae caeteris
+ Te, sed amici veteris
+ Es jam oblita! Superis
+ Vel inferis
+ Ream te criminamur."
+
+I will close this section with the lament written for a medieval
+Gretchen whose fault has been discovered, and whose lover has been
+forced to leave the country. Its bare realism contrasts with the
+lyrical exuberance of the preceding specimens.
+
+
+
+
+GRETCHEN.
+
+No. 41.
+
+
+ Up to this time, well-away!
+ I concealed the truth from day,
+ Went on loving skilfully.
+ Now my fault at length is clear:
+ That the hour of need is near,
+ From my shape all eyes can see.
+ So my mother gives me blows,
+ So my father curses throws;
+ They both treat me savagely.
+ In the house alone I sit,
+ Dare not walk about the street,
+ Nor at play in public be.
+
+ If I walk about the street,
+ Every one I chance to meet
+ Scans me like a prodigy:
+ When they see the load I bear,
+ All the neighbours nudge and stare,
+ Gaping while I hasten by;
+ With their elbows nudge, and so
+ With their finger point, as though
+ I were some monstrosity;
+ Me with nods and winks they spurn,
+ Judge me fit in flames to burn
+ For one lapse from honesty.
+
+ Why this tedious tale prolong?
+ Short, I am become a song,
+ In all mouths a mockery.
+ By this am I done to death,
+ Sorrow kills me, chokes my breath,
+ Ever weep I bitterly.
+ One thing makes me still more grieve,
+ That my friend his home must leave
+ For the same cause instantly;
+ Therefore is my sadness so
+ Multiplied, weighed down with woe,
+ For he too will part from me.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+
+A separate section should be assigned to poems of exile. They are not
+very numerous, but are interesting in connection with the wandering
+life of their vagrant authors. The first has all the dreamy pathos
+felt by a young German leaving his beloved home in some valley of the
+Suabian or Thuringian hills.
+
+
+
+
+ADIEU TO THE VALLEY.
+
+No. 42.
+
+
+ Oh, of love twin-brother anguish!
+ In thy pangs I faint and languish,
+ Cannot find relief from thee!
+ Nay, no marvel! I must grieve her,
+ Wander forth in exile, leave her,
+ Who hath gained the heart of me;
+ Who of loveliness so rare is
+ That for her sake Trojan Paris
+ Would have left his Helenë.
+
+ Smile, thou valley, sweetest, fairest,
+ Wreathed with roses of the rarest,
+ Flower of all the vales that be!
+ Vale of vales, all vales excelling,
+ Sun and moon thy praise are telling,
+ With the song-birds' melody;
+ Nightingales thy praise are singing,
+ O thou soothing solace-bringing
+ To the soul's despondency!
+
+The second was probably intended to be sung at a drinking-party by a
+student taking leave of his companions. It is love that forces him to
+quit their society and to break with his studies. The long rhyming
+lines, followed by a sharp drop at the close of each stanza upon a
+short disjointed phrase, seem to indicate discouragement and
+melancholy.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVER'S PARTING.
+
+No. 43.
+
+
+ Sweet native soil, farewell! dear country of my birth!
+ Fair chamber of the loves! glad home of joy and mirth!
+ To-morrow or to-day I leave you, o'er the earth
+ To wander struck with love, to pine with rage and dearth
+ In exile!
+
+ Farewell, sweet land, and ye, my comrades dear, adieu!
+ To whom with kindly heart I have been ever true;
+ The studies that we loved I may no more pursue;
+ Weep then for me, who part as though I died to you,
+ Love-laden!
+
+ As many as the flowers that Hybla's valley cover,
+ As many as the leaves that on Dodona hover,
+ As many as the fish that sail the wide seas over,
+ So many are the pangs that pain a faithful lover,
+ For ever!
+
+ With the new fire of love my wounded bosom burns;
+ Love knows not any ruth, all tender pity spurns;
+ How true the proverb speaks that saith to him that yearns,
+ "Where love is there is pain; thy pleasure love returns
+ With anguish!"
+
+ Ah, sorrow! ah, how sad the wages of our bliss!
+ In lovers' hearts the flame's too hot for happiness;
+ For Venus still doth send new sighs and new distress
+ When once the enamoured soul is taken with excess
+ Of sweetness!
+
+The third introduces us to a little episode of medieval private life
+which must have been frequent enough. It consists of a debate between
+a father and his son upon the question whether the young man should
+enter into a monastic brotherhood. The youth is lying on a sickbed,
+and thinks that he is already at the point of death. It will be
+noticed that he is only diverted from his project by the mention of a
+student friend (indicated, as usual, by an N), whom he would never be
+able to see again if he assumed the cowl. I suspect, however, that the
+poem has not been transmitted to us entire.
+
+
+
+
+IN ARTICULO MORTIS.
+
+No. 44.
+
+
+_Son_.
+ Oh, my father! help, I pray!
+ Death is near my soul to-day;
+ With your blessing let me be
+ Made a monk right speedily!
+
+ See the foe my life invade!
+ Haste, oh haste, to give me aid!
+ Bring me comfort and heart's ease,
+ Strengthen me in this disease!
+
+_Father_.
+ Oh, my best-belovèd son,
+ What is this thou wouldst have done?
+ Weigh it well in heart and brain:
+ Do not leave me here in pain.
+
+_Son_.
+ Father, this thy loving care
+ Makes me weep full sore, I swear;
+ For you will be childless when
+ I have joined those holy men.
+
+_Father_.
+ Therefore make a little stay,
+ Put it off till the third day;
+ It may be your danger is
+ Not unto the death, I wis.
+
+_Son_.
+ Such the anguish that I feel
+ Through my inmost entrails steal,
+ That I bide in doubt lest death
+ Ere to-morrow end my breath.
+
+_Father_.
+ Those strict rules that monks observe,
+ Well I know them! They must serve
+ Heaven by fasting every day,
+ And by keeping watch alway.
+
+_Son_.
+ Who for God watch through the night
+ Shall receive a crown of light;
+ Who for heaven's sake hungers, he
+ Shall be fed abundantly.
+
+_Father_.
+ Hard and coarse the food they eat,
+ Beans and pottage-herbs their meat;
+ After such a banquet, think,
+ Water is their only drink!
+
+_Son_.
+ What's the good of feasts, or bright
+ Cups of Bacchus, when, in spite
+ Of all comforts, at the last
+ This poor flesh to worms is cast?
+
+_Father_.
+ Well, then, let thy parent's moan
+ Move thee in thy soul, my son!
+ Mourning for thee made a monk,
+ Dead-alive in darkness sunk.
+
+_Son_.
+ They who father, mother love,
+ And their God neglect, will prove
+ That they are in error found
+ When the judgment trump shall sound.
+
+_Father_.
+ Logic! would thou ne'er hadst been
+ Known on earth for mortal teen!
+ Many a clerk thou mak'st to roam
+ Wretched, exiled from his home.--
+
+ Never more thine eyes, my son,
+ Shall behold thy darling one,
+ Him, that little clerk so fair,
+ N., thy friend beyond compare!
+
+_Son_.
+ Oh, alas! unhappy me!
+ What to do I cannot see;
+ Wandering lost in exile so,
+ Without guide or light I go!--
+
+ Dry your tears, my father dear,
+ Haply there is better cheer;
+ Now my mind on change is set,
+ I'll not be a monk, not yet.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+
+The order adopted in this essay brings us now to drinking-songs. Next
+to spring and love, our students set their affections principally on
+the tavern and the winebowl. In the poems on the Order we have seen
+how large a space in their vagrant lives was occupied by the tavern
+and its jovial company of topers and gamesters. It was there that--
+
+ "Some are gaming, some are drinking,
+ Some are living without thinking;
+ And of those who make the racket,
+ Some are stripped of coat and jacket;
+ Some get clothes of finer feather,
+ Some are cleaned out altogether;
+ No one there dreads death's invasion,
+ But all drink in emulation."
+
+The song from which I have extracted this stanza contains a parody of
+S. Thomas Aquinas' hymn on the Eucharist.[33] To translate it seemed
+to me impossible; but I will cite the following stanza, which may be
+compared with stanzas ix. and x. of _Lauda Sion_:--
+
+ "Bibit hera, bibit herus,
+ Bibit miles, bibit clerus,
+ Bibit ille, bibit illa,
+ Bibit servus cum ancilla,
+ Bibit velox, bibit piger,
+ Bibit albus, bibit niger,
+ Bibit constans, bibit vagus,
+ Bibit rudis, bibit magus."
+
+Several of the best anacreontics of the period are even more
+distinctly parodies. The following panegyric of wine, for example, is
+modelled upon a hymn to the Virgin:--
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 33: _In Taberna, Carm. Bur_., p. 235.]
+
+
+
+
+A SEQUENCE IN PRAISE OF WINE.
+
+No. 45.
+
+
+ Wine the good and bland, thou blessing
+ Of the good, the bad's distressing,
+ Sweet of taste by all confessing,
+ Hail, thou world's felicity!
+ Hail thy hue, life's gloom dispelling;
+ Hail thy taste, all tastes excelling;
+ By thy power, in this thy dwelling
+ Deign to make us drunk with thee!
+
+ Oh, how blest for bounteous uses
+ Is the birth of pure vine-juices!
+ Safe's the table which produces
+ Wine in goodly quality.
+ Oh, in colour how auspicious!
+ Oh, in odour how delicious!
+ In the mouth how sweet, propitious
+ To the tongue enthralled by thee!
+
+ Blest the man who first thee planted,
+ Called thee by thy name enchanted!
+ He whose cups have ne'er been scanted
+ Dreads no danger that may be.
+ Blest the belly where thou bidest!
+ Blest the tongue where thou residest!
+ Blest the mouth through which thou glidest,
+ And the lips thrice blest by thee!
+
+ Therefore let wine's praise be sounded,
+ Healths to topers all propounded;
+ We shall never be confounded,
+ Toping for eternity!
+ Pray we: here be thou still flowing,
+ Plenty on our board bestowing,
+ While with jocund voice we're showing
+ How we serve thee--Jubilee!
+
+Another, regarding the date of which I have no information, is an
+imitation of a well-known _Christmas Carol_.
+
+
+
+
+A CAROL OF WINE.
+
+No. 46.
+
+
+ In dulci jubilo
+ Sing we, make merry so!
+ Since our heart's pleasure
+ Latet in poculo,
+ Drawn from the cask, good measure.
+ Pro hoc convivio,
+ Nunc, nunc bibito!
+
+ O crater parvule!
+ How my soul yearns for thee!
+ Make me now merry,
+ O potus optime,
+ Claret or hock or sherry!
+ Et vos concinite:
+ Vivant socii!
+
+ O vini caritas!
+ O Bacchi lenitas!
+ We've drained our purses
+ Per multa pocula:
+ Yet hope we for new mercies,
+ Nummoram gaudia:
+ Would that we had them, ah!
+
+ Ubi sunt gaudia? where,
+ If that they be not there?
+ There the lads are singing
+ Selecta cantica:
+ There are glasses ringing
+ In villae curia;
+ Oh, would that we were there!
+
+_In Dulci Jubilo_ yields an example of mixed Latin and German. This is
+the case too with a comparatively ancient drinking-song quoted by
+Geiger in his _Renaissance und Humanismus_, p. 414. It may be
+mentioned that the word _Bursae_, for _Burschen_, occurs in stanza v.
+This word, to indicate a student, can also be found in _Carm. Bur._,
+p. 236, where we are introduced to scholars drinking yellow Rhine wine
+out of glasses of a pale pink colour--already in the twelfth century!
+
+
+
+
+THE STUDENTS' WINE-BOUT.
+
+No. 47.
+
+
+ Ho, all ye jovial brotherhood,
+ Quos sitis vexat plurima,
+ I know a host whose wits are good,
+ Quod vina spectat optima.
+
+ His wine he blends not with the juice
+ E puteo qui sumitur;
+ Each kind its virtue doth produce
+ E botris ut exprimitur.
+
+ Host, bring us forth good wine and strong,
+ In cella quod est optimum!
+ We brethren will our sport prolong
+ Ad noctis usque terminum.
+
+ Whoso to snarl or bite is fain,
+ Ut canes decet rabidos,
+ Outside our circle may remain,
+ Ad porcos eat sordidos,
+
+ Hurrah! my lads, we'll merry make!
+ Levate sursum pocula!
+ God's blessing on all wine we take,
+ In sempiterna saecula!
+
+Two lyrics of distinguished excellence, which still hold their place
+in the _Commersbuch_, cannot claim certain antiquity in their present
+form. They are not included in the _Carmina Burana_; yet their style
+is so characteristic of the Archipoeta, that I believe we may credit
+him with at least a share in their composition. The first starts with
+an allusion to the Horatian _tempus edax rerum_.
+
+
+
+
+TIME'S A-FLYING.
+
+No. 48.
+
+
+ Laurel-crowned Horatius,
+ True, how true thy saying!
+ Swift as wind flies over us
+ Time, devouring, slaying.
+ Where are, oh! those goblets full
+ Of wine honey-laden,
+ Strifes and loves and bountiful
+ Lips of ruddy maiden?
+
+ Grows the young grape tenderly,
+ And the maid is growing;
+ But the thirsty poet, see,
+ Years on him are snowing!
+ What's the use on hoary curls
+ Of the bays undying.
+ If we may not kiss the girls,
+ Drink while time's a-flying?
+
+The second consists of a truly brilliant development of the theme
+which our Herrick condensed into one splendid phrase--"There's no lust
+like to poetry!"
+
+
+
+
+THERE'S NO LUST LIKE TO POETRY.
+
+No. 49.
+
+
+ Sweet in goodly fellowship
+ Tastes red wine and rare O!
+ But to kiss a girl's ripe lip
+ Is a gift more fair O!
+ Yet a gift more sweet, more fine,
+ Is the lyre of Maro!
+ While these three good gifts were mine,
+ I'd not change with Pharaoh.
+
+ Bacchus wakes within my breast
+ Love and love's desire,
+ Venus comes and stirs the blessed
+ Rage of Phoebus' fire;
+ Deathless honour is our due
+ From the laurelled sire:
+ Woe should I turn traitor to
+ Wine and love and lyre!
+
+ Should a tyrant rise and say,
+ "Give up wine!" I'd do it;
+ "Love no girls!" I would obey,
+ Though my heart should rue it.
+ "Dash thy lyre!" suppose he saith,
+ Naught should bring me to it;
+ "Yield thy lyre or die!" my breath,
+ Dying, should thrill through it!
+
+A lyric of the elder period in praise of wine and love, which forcibly
+illustrates the contempt felt by the student class for the unlettered
+laity and boors, shall be inserted here. It seems to demand a tune.
+
+
+
+
+WINE AND VENUS.
+
+No. 50.
+
+
+ Ho, comrades mine!
+ What is your pleasure?
+ What business fine
+ Or mirthful measure?
+ Lo, Venus toward our crew advancing,
+ A choir of Dryads round her dancing!
+
+ Good fellows you!
+ The time is jolly!
+ Earth springs anew,
+ Bans melancholy;
+ Bid long farewell to winter weather!
+ Let lads and maids be blithe together.
+
+ Dame Venus spurns
+ Her brother Ocean;
+ To Bacchus turns;
+ No colder potion
+ Deserves her godhead's approbation;
+ On sober souls she pours damnation.
+
+ Let then this band,
+ Imbued with learning,
+ By Venus stand,
+ Her wages earning!
+ Laymen we spurn from our alliance,
+ Like brutes to art deaf, dumb to science.
+
+ Two gods alone
+ We serve and mate with;
+ One law we own,
+ Nor hold debate with:
+ Who lives the goodly student fashion
+ Must love and win love back with passion!
+
+Among drinking-songs of the best period in this literature may be
+reckoned two disputations between water and wine. In the one, Thetis
+defends herself against Lyaeus, and the poet assists in vision at
+their contest. The scene is appropriately laid in the third sphere,
+the pleasant heaven of Venus. The other, which on the whole appears to
+me preferable, and which I have therefore chosen for translation,
+begins and ends with the sound axiom that water and wine ought never
+to be mixed. It is manifest that the poet reserves the honour of the
+day for wine, though his arguments are fair to both sides. The final
+point, which breaks the case of water down and determines her utter
+confusion, is curious, since it shows that people in the Middle Ages
+were fully alive to the perils of sewage-contaminated wells.
+
+
+
+
+THE CONTEST OF WINE AND WATER.
+
+No. 51.
+
+
+ Laying truth bare, stripped of fable,
+ Briefly as I may be able,
+ With good reasons manifold,
+ I will tell why man should never
+ Copulate, but rather sever,
+ Things that strife and hatred hold.
+
+ When one cup in fell confusion
+ Wine with water blends, the fusion,
+ Call it by what name you will,
+ Is no blessing, nor deserveth
+ Any praise, but rather serveth
+ For the emblem of all ill.
+
+ Wine perceives the water present,
+ And with pain exclaims, "What peasant
+ Dared to mingle thee with me?
+ Rise, go forth, get out, and leave me!
+ In the same place, here to grieve me,
+ Thou hast no just claim to be.
+
+ "Vile and shameless in thy going,
+ Into cracks thou still art flowing,
+ That in foul holes thou mayst lie;
+ O'er the earth thou ought'st to wander,
+ On the earth thy liquor squander,
+ And at length in anguish die.
+
+ "How canst thou adorn a table?
+ No one sings or tells a fable
+ In thy presence dull and drear;
+ But the guest who erst was jolly,
+ Laughing, joking, bent on folly,
+ Silent sits when thou art near.
+
+ "Should one drink of thee to fulness,
+ Sound before, he takes an illness;
+ All his bowels thou dost stir;
+ Booms the belly, wind ariseth,
+ Which, enclosed and pent, surpriseth
+ With a thousand sighs the ear.
+
+ "When the stomach's so inflated,
+ Blasts are then ejaculated
+ From both draughts with divers sound;
+ And that organ thus affected,
+ All the air is soon infected
+ By the poison breathed around."
+
+ Water thus wine's home-thrust warded:
+ "All thy life is foul and sordid,
+ Sunk in misery, steeped in vice;
+ Those who drink thee lose their morals,
+ Waste their time in sloth and quarrels,
+ Rolling down sin's precipice.
+
+ "Thou dost teach man's tongue to stutter;
+ He goes reeling in the gutter
+ Who hath deigned to kiss thy lips;
+ Hears men speak without discerning,
+ Sees a hundred tapers burning
+ When there are but two poor dips.
+
+ "He who feels for thee soul's hunger
+ Is a murderer or whoremonger,
+ Davus Geta Birria;
+ Such are they whom thou dost nourish;
+ With thy fame and name they flourish
+ In the tavern's disarray.
+
+ "Thou by reason of thy badness
+ Art confined in prison sadness,
+ Cramped and small thy dwellings are:
+ I am great the whole world over,
+ Spread myself abroad and cover
+ Every part of earth afar.
+
+ "Drink I yield to palates burning;
+ They who for soul's health are yearning,
+ Need the aid that I have given;
+ Since all pilgrims, at their praying,
+ Far or near, I am conveying
+ To the palaces of heaven."
+
+ Wine replied: "What thou hast vaunted
+ Proves thee full of fraud; for granted
+ That thou earnest ships o'er sea,
+ Yet thou then dost swell and riot;
+ Till they wreck thou hast no quiet;
+ Thus they are deceived through thee.
+
+ "He whose strength is insufficient
+ Thee to slake with heat efficient,
+ Sunk in mortal peril lies:
+ Trusting thee the poor wretch waneth,
+ And through thee at length attaineth
+ To the joys of Paradise.
+
+ "I'm a god, as that true poet
+ Naso testifies; men owe it
+ Unto me that they are sage;
+ When they do not drink, professors
+ Lose their wits and lack assessors
+ Round about the lecture-stage.
+
+ "'Tis impossible to sever
+ Truth from falsehood if you never
+ Learn to drink my juices neat.
+ Thanks to me, dumb speak, deaf listen,
+ Blind folk see, the senses glisten,
+ And the lame man finds his feet.
+
+ "Eld through me to youth returneth,
+ While thine influence o'erturneth
+ All a young man's lustihead;
+ By my force the world is laden
+ With new births, but boy or maiden
+ Through thy help was never bred."
+
+ Water saith: "A god thou! Just men
+ By thy craft become unjust men,
+ Bad, worse, worst, degenerous!
+ Thanks to thee, their words half uttered
+ Through the drunken lips are stuttered,
+ And thy sage is Didymus.
+
+ "I will speak the truth out wholly:
+ Earth bears fruit by my gift solely,
+ And the meadows bloom in May;
+ When it rains not, herbs and grasses
+ Dry with drought, spring's beauty passes,
+ Flowers and lilies fade away.
+
+ "Lo, thy crooked mother pining,
+ On her boughs the grapes declining,
+ Barren through the dearth of rain;
+ Mark her tendrils lean and sterile
+ O'er the parched earth at their peril
+ Bent in unavailing pain!
+
+ "Famine through all lands prevaileth,
+ Terror-struck the people waileth,
+ When I choose to keep away;
+ Christians kneel to Christ to gain me,
+ Jews and Pagans to obtain me
+ Ceaseless vows and offerings pay."
+
+ Wine saith: "To the deaf thou'rt singing,
+ Those vain self-laudations flinging!
+ Otherwhere thou hast been shown!
+ Patent 'tis to all the races
+ How impure and foul thy place is;
+ We believe what we have known!
+
+ "Thou of things the scum and rotten
+ Sewer, where ordures best forgotten
+ And unmentioned still descend!
+ Filth and garbage, stench and poison.
+ Thou dost bear in fetid foison!
+ Here I stop lest words offend."
+
+ Water rose, the foe invaded,
+ In her own defence upbraided
+ Wine for his invective base:
+ "Now at last we've drawn the curtain!
+ Who, what god thou art is certain
+ From thy oracle's disgrace.
+
+ "This thine impudent oration
+ Hurts not me; 'tis desecration
+ To a god, and fouls his tongue!
+ At the utmost at nine paces
+ Can I suffer filthy places,
+ Fling far from me dirt and dung!"
+
+ Wine saith: "This repudiation
+ Of my well-weighed imputation
+ Doth not clear thyself of crime!
+ Many a man and oft who swallowed
+ Thine infected potion, followed
+ After death in one day's time."
+
+ Hearing this, in stupefaction
+ Water stood; no words, no action,
+ Now restrained her sobs of woe.
+ Wine exclaims, "Why art thou dumb then?
+ Without answer? Is it come then
+ To thy complete overthrow?"
+
+ I who heard the whole contention
+ Now declare my song's intention,
+ And to all the world proclaim:
+ They who mix these things shall ever
+ Henceforth be accursed, and never
+ In Christ's kingdom portion claim.
+
+The same precept, "Keep wine and water apart," is conveyed at the
+close of a lyric distinguished in other respects for the brutal
+passion of its drunken fervour. I have not succeeded in catching the
+rollicking swing of the original verse; and I may observe that the
+last two stanzas seem to form a separate song, although their metre is
+the same as that of the first four.
+
+
+
+
+BACCHIC FRENZY.
+
+No. 52.
+
+
+ Topers in and out of season!
+ 'Tis not thirst but better reason
+ Bids you tope on steadily!--
+ Pass the wine-cup, let it be
+ Filled and filled for bout on bout
+ Never sleep!
+ Racy jest and song flash out!
+ Spirits leap!
+
+ Those who cannot drink their rations,
+ Go, begone from these ovations!
+ Here's no place for bashful boys;
+ Like the plague, they spoil our joys.--
+ Bashful eyes bring rustic cheer
+ When we're drunk,
+ And a blush betrays a drear
+ Want of spunk.
+
+ If there's here a fellow lurking
+ Who his proper share is shirking,
+ Let the door to him be shown,
+ From our crew we'll have him thrown;--
+ He's more desolate than death,
+ Mixed with us;
+ Let him go and end his breath!
+ Better thus!
+
+ When your heart is set on drinking,
+ Drink on without stay or thinking,
+ Till you cannot stand up straight,
+ Nor one word articulate!--
+ But herewith I pledge to you
+ This fair health:
+ May the glass no mischief do,
+ Bring you wealth!
+
+ Wed not you the god and goddess,
+ For the god doth scorn the goddess;
+ He whose name is Liber, he
+ Glories in his liberty.
+ All her virtue in the cup
+ Runs to waste,
+ And wine wedded yieldeth up
+ Strength and taste.
+
+ Since she is the queen of ocean,
+ Goddess she may claim devotion;
+ But she is no mate to kiss
+ His superior holiness.
+ Bacchus never deigned to be
+ Watered, he!
+ Liber never bore to be
+ Christened, he!
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+
+Closely allied to drinking-songs are some comic ditties which may have
+been sung at wine-parties. Of these I have thought it worth while to
+present a few specimens, though their medieval bluntness of humour
+does not render them particularly entertaining to a modern reader.
+
+The first I have chosen is _The Lament of the Roast Swan_. It must be
+remembered that this bird was esteemed a delicacy in the Middle Ages,
+and also that pepper was highly prized for its rarity. This gives a
+certain point to the allusion in the third stanza.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAMENT OF THE ROAST SWAN.
+
+No. 53.
+
+
+ Time was my wings were my delight,
+ Time was I made a lovely sight;
+ 'Twas when I was a swan snow-white.
+ Woe's me! I vow,
+ Black am I now,
+ Burned up, back, beak, and brow!
+
+ The baster turns me on the spit,
+ The fire I've felt the force of it,
+ The carver carves me bit by bit.
+ I'd rather in the water float
+ Under the bare heavens like a boat,
+ Than have this pepper down my throat.
+
+ Whiter I was than wool or snow,
+ Fairer than any bird I know;
+ Now am I blacker than a crow.
+
+ Now in the gravy-dish I lie,
+ I cannot swim, I cannot fly,
+ Nothing but gnashing teeth I spy.
+ Woe's me! I vow, &c.
+
+The next is _The Last Will of the Dying Ass_. There is not much to be
+said for the wit of this piece.
+
+
+
+
+THE WILL OF THE DYING ASS.
+
+No. 54.
+
+
+ While a boor, as poets tell,
+ Whacked his patient ass too well,
+ On the ground half dead it fell.
+ La sol fa,
+ On the ground half dead it fell,
+ La sol fa mi re ut.
+
+ Then with gesture sad and low,
+ Streaming eyes and words of woe,
+ He at length addressed it so:
+ "Had I known, my gentle ass,
+ Thou from me so soon wouldst pass,
+ I'd have swaddled thee, alas!
+
+ "Made for thee a tunic meet,
+ Shirt and undershirt complete,
+ Breeches, drawers of linen sweet.
+
+ "Rise awhile, for pity's sake,
+ That ere life your limbs forsake
+ You your legacies may make!"
+
+ Soon the ass stood up, and thus,
+ With a weak voice dolorous,
+ His last will proclaimed for us:
+
+ "To the magistrates my head,
+ Eyes to constables," he said,
+ "Ears to judges, when I'm dead;
+
+ "To old men my teeth shall fall,
+ Lips to wanton wooers all,
+ And my tongue to wives that brawl.
+
+ "Let my feet the bailiffs win,
+ Nostrils the tobacco-men,
+ And fat canons take my skin.
+
+ "Voice to singing boys I give,
+ Throat to topers, may they live!
+ **** to students amative.
+
+ "*** on shepherds I bestow,
+ Thistles on divines, and lo!
+ To the law my shade shall go.
+
+ "Elders have my tardy pace,
+ Boys my rude and rustic grace,
+ Monks my simple open face."
+
+ He who saith this testament
+ Will not hold, let him be shent;
+ He's an ass by all consent.
+ La sol fa,
+ He's an ass by all consent,
+ La sol fa mi re ut.
+
+As a third specimen I select a little bit of mixed prose and verse
+from the _Carmina Burana_, which is curious from its allusion to the
+Land of Cockaigne. Goliardic literature, it may be parenthetically
+observed, has some strong pieces of prose comedy and satire. Of these,
+the _Mass of Topers_ and _Mass of Gamesters_, the _Gospel according to
+Marks_, and the description of a fat monk's daily life deserve
+quotation.[34] They are for the most part, however, too profane to
+bear translation.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 34: Wright's _Rel. Ant._, ii.; _Carm. Bur._, pp. 248 and
+22; Wright's _Mapes_, p. xl.]
+
+
+
+
+THE ABBOT OF COCKAIGNE.
+
+No. 55.
+
+
+ I am the Abbot of Cockaigne,
+ And this is my counsel with topers;
+ And in the sect of Decius (gamesters) this is my will;
+ And whoso shall seek me in taverns before noon;
+ After evensong shall he go forth naked,
+ And thus, stripped of raiment, shall lament him:
+ Wafna! wafna!
+ O Fate most foul, what hast thou done?
+ The joys of man beneath the sun
+ Thou hast stolen, every one!
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+
+The transition from these trivial and slightly interesting comic songs
+to poems of a serious import, which played so important a part in
+Goliardic literature, must of necessity be abrupt. It forms no part of
+my present purpose to exhibit the Wandering Students in their capacity
+as satirists. That belongs more properly to a study of the earlier
+Reformation than to such an inquiry as I have undertaken in this
+treatise. Satires, especially medieval satires, are apt, besides, to
+lose their force and value in translation. I have therefore confined
+myself to five specimens, more or less closely connected with the
+subjects handled in this study.
+
+The first has the interest of containing some ideas which Villon
+preserved in his ballad of the men of old time.
+
+
+
+
+DEATH TAKES ALL.
+
+No. 56.
+
+
+ Hear, O thou earth, hear, thou encircling sea,
+ Yea, all that live beneath the sun, hear ye
+ How of this world the bravery and the glory
+ Are but vain forms and shadows transitory,
+ Even as all things 'neath Time's empire show
+ By their short durance and swift overthrow!
+ Nothing avails the dignity of kings,
+ Naught, naught avail the strength and stuff of things;
+ The wisdom of the arts no succour brings;
+ Genus and species help not at death's hour,
+ No man was saved by gold in that dread stour;
+ The substance of things fadeth as a flower,
+ As ice 'neath sunshine melts into a shower.
+ Where is Plato, where is Porphyrius?
+ Where is Tullius, where is Virgilius?
+ Where is Thales, where is Empedocles,
+ Or illustrious Aristoteles?
+ Where's Alexander, peerless of might?
+ Where is Hector, Troy's stoutest knight?
+ Where is King David, learning's light?
+ Solomon where, that wisest wight?
+ Where is Helen, and Paris rose-bright?
+ They have fallen to the bottom, as a stone rolls:
+ Who knows if rest be granted to their souls?
+ But Thou, O God, of faithful men the Lord,
+ To us Thy favour evermore afford
+ When on the wicked judgment shall be poured!
+
+The second marks the passage from those feelings of youth and
+spring-time which have been copiously illustrated in Sections
+xiv.-xvii., to emotions befitting later manhood and life's autumn.
+
+
+
+
+AUTUMN YEARS.
+
+No. 57.
+
+
+ While life's April blossom blew,
+ What I willed I then might do,
+ Lust and law seemed comrades true.
+ As I listed, unresisted,
+ Hither, thither, could I play,
+ And my wanton flesh obey.
+
+ When life's autumn days decline,
+ Thus to live, a libertine,
+ Fancy-free as thoughts incline,
+ Manhood's older age and colder
+ Now forbids; removes, destroys
+ All those ways of wonted joys.
+
+ Age with admonition wise
+ Thus doth counsel and advise,
+ While her voice within me cries:
+ "For repenting and relenting
+ There is room; forgiveness falls
+ On all contrite prodigals!"
+
+ I will seek a better mind;
+ Change, correct, and leave behind
+ What I did with purpose blind:
+ From vice sever, with endeavour
+ Yield my soul to serious things,
+ Seek the joy that virtue brings.
+
+The third would find a more appropriate place in a hymn-book than in a
+collection of _Carmina Vagorum_. It is, however, written in a lyrical
+style so closely allied to the secular songs of the _Carmina Burana_
+(where it occurs) that I have thought it well to quote its grimly
+medieval condemnation of human life.
+
+
+
+
+VANITAS VANITATUM.
+
+No. 58.
+
+
+ This vile world
+ In madness hurled
+ Offers but false shadows;
+ Joys that wane
+ And waste like vain
+ Lilies of the meadows.
+
+ Worldly wealth,
+ Youth, strength, and health,
+ Cramp the soul's endeavour;
+ Drive it down
+ In hell to drown,
+ Hell that burns for ever.
+
+ What we see,
+ And what let be,
+ While on earth we tarry,
+ We shall cast
+ Like leaves at last
+ Which the sere oaks carry.
+
+ Carnal life,
+ Man's law of strife,
+ Hath but brief existence;
+ Passes, fades,
+ Like wavering shades
+ Without real subsistence.
+
+ Therefore bind,
+ Tread down and grind
+ Fleshly lusts that blight us;
+ So heaven's bliss
+ 'Mid saints that kiss
+ Shall for aye delight us.
+
+The fourth, in like manner, would have but little to do with a
+Commersbuch, were it not for the fact that the most widely famous
+modern student-song of Germany has borrowed two passages from its
+serious and tragic rhythm. Close inspection of _Gaudeamus Igitur_
+shows that the metrical structure of that song is based on the
+principle of quoting one of its long lines and rhyming to it.
+
+
+
+
+ON CONTEMPT FOR THE WORLD.
+
+No. 59.
+
+
+ "De contemptu mundi:" this is the theme I've taken:
+ Time it is from sleep to rise, from death's torpor waken:
+ Gather virtue's grain and leave tares of sin forsaken.
+ Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
+
+ Brief is life, and brevity briefly shall be ended:
+ Death comes quick, fears no man, none hath his dart suspended:
+ Death kills all, to no man's prayer hath he condescended.
+ Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
+
+ Where are they who in this world, ere we kept, were keeping?
+ Come unto the churchyard, thou! see where they are sleeping!
+ Dust and ashes are they, worms in their flesh are creeping.
+ Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
+
+ Into life each man is born with great teen and trouble:
+ All through life he drags along; toil on toil is double:
+ When life's done, the pangs of death take him, break the bubble.
+ Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
+
+ If from sin thou hast been turned, born a new man wholly,
+ Changed thy life to better things, childlike, simple, holy;
+ Thus into God's realm shalt thou enter with the lowly.
+ Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.
+
+Having alluded to _Gaudeamus Igitur_, I shall close my translations
+with a version of it into English. The dependence of this lyric upon
+the rhythm and substance of the poem on _Contempt for the World_,
+which I have already indicated, is perhaps the reason why it is sung
+by German students after the funeral of a comrade. The Office for the
+Dead sounding in their ears, occasions the startling _igitur_ with
+which it opens; and their mind reverts to solemn phrases in the midst
+of masculine determination to enjoy the present while it is yet
+theirs.
+
+
+
+
+GAUDEAMUS IGITUR.
+
+No. 60.
+
+
+ Let us live then and be glad
+ While young life's before us!
+ After youthful pastime had,
+ After old age hard and sad,
+ Earth will slumber o'er us.
+
+ Where are they who in this world,
+ Ere we kept, were keeping?
+ Go ye to the gods above;
+ Go to hell; inquire thereof:
+ They are not; they're sleeping.
+
+ Brief is life, and brevity
+ Briefly shall be ended:
+ Death comes like a whirlwind strong,
+ Bears us with his blast along;
+ None shall be defended.
+
+ Live this university,
+ Men that learning nourish;
+ Live each member of the same,
+ Long live all that bear its name;
+ Let them ever flourish!
+
+ Live the commonwealth also,
+ And the men that guide it!
+ Live our town in strength and health,
+ Founders, patrons, by whose wealth
+ We are here provided!
+
+ Live all girls! A health to you,
+ Melting maids and beauteous!
+ Live the wives and women too,
+ Gentle, loving, tender, true,
+ Good, industrious, duteous!
+
+ Perish cares that pule and pine!
+ Perish envious blamers!
+ Die the Devil, thine and mine!
+ Die the starch-necked Philistine!
+ Scoffers and defamers!
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+
+I have now fulfilled the purpose which I had in view when I began this
+study of the _Carmina Vagorum_, and have reproduced in English verse
+what seemed to me the most characteristic specimens of that
+literature, in so far as it may be considered precursory of the
+Renaissance.
+
+In spite of novelty, in spite of historical interest, in spite of a
+certain literary charm, it is not an edifying product of medieval art
+with which I have been dealing. When I look back upon my own work, and
+formulate the impression left upon my mind by familiarity with the
+songs I have translated, the doubt occurs whether some apology be not
+required for having dragged these forth from antiquarian obscurity.
+
+The truth is that there is very little that is elevated in the lyrics
+of the Goliardi. They are almost wholly destitute of domestic piety,
+of patriotism, of virtuous impulse, of heroic resolve. The greatness
+of an epoch which throbbed with the enthusiasms of the Crusades, which
+gave birth to a Francis and a Dominic, which witnessed the manly
+resistance offered by the Lombard burghs to the Teutonic Emperor, the
+formation of Northern France into a solid monarchy, and the victorious
+struggle of the Papacy against the Empire, finds but rare expression
+in this poetry. From the _Carmina Burana_ we cull one chant indeed on
+Saladin, one spirited lament for Richard Coeur de Lion; but their
+general tone is egotistic.
+
+Even the satires, so remarkable for boldness, are directed against
+those ecclesiastical abuses which touched the interests of the clerkly
+classes--against simony, avarice, venality in the Roman Curia, against
+the ambition of prelates and the effort to make princely benefices
+hereditary, rather than against the real sins of the Church--her
+wilful solidification of popular superstitions for the purposes of
+self-aggrandisement, her cruel persecution of free thought, and her
+deflection from the spirit of her Founder.
+
+With regard to women, abundant examples have been adduced to
+illustrate the sensual and unromantic spirit of these lettered lovers.
+A note of undisguised materialism sounds throughout the large majority
+of their erotic songs. Tenderness of feeling is rarely present. The
+passion is one-sided, recognised as ephemeral, without a vista on the
+sanctities of life in common with the beloved object. Notable
+exceptions to the general rule are the lyrics I have printed above on
+pp. 75-78. But it would have been easier to confirm the impression of
+licentiousness than to multiply specimens of delicate sentiment, had I
+chosen to ransack the whole stores of the _Carmina Burana_.
+
+It is not necessary to censure their lack of so-called chivalrous
+woman-worship. That artificial mood of emotion, though glorified by
+the literary art of greatest poets, has something pitiably unreal,
+incurably morbid, in its mysticism. But, putting this aside, we are
+still bound to notice the absence of that far more human self-devotion
+of man to woman which forms a conspicuous element in the Arthurian
+romances. The love of Tristram for Iseult, of Lancelot for Guinevere,
+of Beaumains for his lady, is alien to the Goliardic conception of
+intersexual relations. Nowhere do we find a trace of Arthur's vow
+imposed upon his knights: "never to do outrage,... and alway to do
+ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succour upon pain of death." This
+manly respect for women, which was, if not precisely the purest, yet
+certainly the most fruitful social impulse of the Middle Ages,
+receives no expression in the _Carmina Vagorum_.
+
+The reason is not far to seek. The Clerici were a class debarred from
+domesticity, devoted in theory to celibacy, in practice incapable of
+marriage. They were not so much unsocial or anti-social as
+extra-social; and while they gave a loose rein to their appetites,
+they respected none of those ties, anticipated none of those home
+pleasures, which consecrate the animal desires in everyday existence
+as we know it. One of their most popular poems is a brutal monastic
+diatribe on matrimony, fouler in its stupid abuse of women, more
+unmanly in its sordid imputations, than any satire which emanated from
+the corruption of Imperial Rome.[35] The cynicism of this exhortation
+against marriage forms a proper supplement to the other kind of
+cynicism which emerges in the lyrics of triumphant seducers and light
+lovers.
+
+But why then have I taken the trouble to translate these songs, and
+to present them in such profusion to a modern audience? It is because,
+after making all allowances for their want of great or noble feeling,
+due to the peculiar medium from which they sprang, they are in many
+ways realistically beautiful and in a strict sense true to vulgar
+human nature. They are the spontaneous expression of careless, wanton,
+unreflective youth. And all this they were, too, in an age which we
+are apt to regard as incapable of these very qualities.
+
+The defects I have been at pains to indicate render the Goliardic
+poems remarkable as documents for the right understanding of the
+brilliant Renaissance epoch which was destined to close the Middle
+Ages. To the best of them we may with certainty assign the
+seventy-five years between 1150 and 1225. In that period, so fruitful
+of great efforts and of great results in the fields of politics and
+thought and literature, efforts and results foredoomed to partial
+frustration and to perverse misapplication--in that potent space of
+time, so varied in its intellectual and social manifestations, so
+pregnant with good and evil, so rapid in mutations, so indeterminate
+between advance and retrogression--this Goliardic poetry stands
+alone. It occupies a position of unique and isolated, if limited,
+interest; because it was no outcome of feudalism or ecclesiasticism;
+because it has no tincture of chivalrous or mystic piety; because it
+implies no metaphysical determination; because it is pagan in the
+sense of being natural; because it is devoid of allegory, and,
+finally, because it is emphatically humanistic.
+
+In these respects it detaches itself from the artistic and literary
+phenomena of the century which gave it birth. In these respects it
+anticipates the real eventual Renaissance.
+
+There are, indeed, points of contact between the Students' Songs and
+other products of the Middle Ages. Scholastic quibblings upon words;
+reiterated commonplaces about spring; the brutal contempt for
+villeins; the frequent employment of hymn-rhythms and preoccupation
+with liturgical phrases--these show that the Wandering Scholars were
+creatures of their age. But the qualities which this lyrical
+literature shares with that of the court, the temple, or the schools
+are mainly superficial; whereas the vital inspiration, the specific
+flavour, which render it noteworthy, are distinct and self-evolved. It
+is a premature, an unconscious effort made by a limited class to
+achieve _per saltum_ what was slowly and laboriously wrought out by
+whole nations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Too
+precocious, too complete within too narrow limits, it was doomed to
+sterility. Not the least singular fact about it is that though the
+_Carmina Vagorum_ continued to be appreciated, they were neither
+imitated nor developed to any definite extent after the period which I
+have indicated. They fell still-born upon the unreceptive soil of
+European culture at that epoch. Yet they foreshadowed the mental and
+moral attitude which Europe was destined to assume when Italy through
+humanism gave its tone to the Renaissance.
+
+The Renaissance, in Italy as elsewhere, had far more serious aims and
+enthusiasms in the direction of science, refined self-culture,
+discoveries, analysis of man and nature, than have always been
+ascribed to it. The men of that epoch did more hard work for the
+world, conferred more sterling benefits on their posterity, than those
+who study it chiefly from the point of view of art are ready to admit.
+But the mental atmosphere in which those heroes lived and wrought was
+one of carelessness with regard to moral duties and religious
+aspirations, of exuberant delight in pleasure as an object of
+existence. The glorification of the body and the senses, the
+repudiation of an ascetic tyranny which had long in theory imposed
+impossible abstentions on the carnal man, was a marked feature in
+their conception of the world; and connected with this was a return in
+no merely superficial spirit to the antique paganism of Greece and
+Rome.
+
+These characteristics of the Renaissance we find already outlined with
+surprising definiteness, and at the same time with an almost childlike
+naïveté, a careless, mirth-provoking nonchalance, in the _Carmina
+Vagorum_. They remind us of the Italian lyrics which Lorenzo de'
+Medici and Poliziano wrote for the Florentine populace; and though in
+form and artistic intention they differ from the Latin verse of that
+period, their view of life is not dissimilar to that of a Pontano or a
+Beccadelli.
+
+Some folk may regard the things I have presented to their view as ugly
+or insignificant, because they lack the higher qualities of sentiment;
+others may over-value them for precisely the same reason. They seem to
+me noteworthy as the first unmistakable sign of a change in modern
+Europe which was inevitable and predestined, as the first literary
+effort to restore the moral attitude of antiquity which had been
+displaced by medieval Christianity. I also feel the special relation
+which they bear to English poetry of the Etizabethan age--a relation
+that has facilitated their conversion into our language.
+
+That Wandering Students of the twelfth century should have transcended
+the limitations of their age; that they should have absorbed so many
+elements of life into their scheme of natural enjoyment as the artists
+and scholars of the fifteenth; that they should have theorised their
+appetites and impulses with Valla, have produced masterpieces of
+poetry to rival Ariosto's, or criticisms of society in the style of
+Rabelais, was not to be expected. What their lyrics prove by
+anticipation is the sincerity of the so-called paganism of the
+Renaissance. When we read them, we perceive that that quality was
+substantially independent of the classical revival; though the
+influences of antique literature were eagerly seized upon as useful
+means for strengthening and giving tone to an already potent revolt of
+nature against hypocritical and palsy-stricken forms of spiritual
+despotism.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 35: _Golias de Conjuge non ducenda_, Wright's _Mapes_, p.
+77.]
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+NOTE ON THE "ORDO VAGORUM" AND THE "ARCHIPOETA."
+
+_See Section vii. pp. 16-23, above._
+
+
+It seems desirable that I should enlarge upon some topics which I
+treated somewhat summarily in Section vii. I assumed that the
+Wandering Scholars regarded themselves as a kind of Guild or Order;
+and for this assumption the Songs Nos. 1, 2, 3, translated in Section
+xiii. are a sufficient warrant. Yet the case might be considerably
+strengthened. In the _Sequentia falsi evangelii secundum marcam
+argenti_[36] we read of the _Gens Lusorum_ or Tribe of Gamesters,
+which corresponds to the _Secta Decii_,[37] the _Ordo Vagorum_, and
+the _Familia Goliae_. Again, in Wright's _Walter Mapes_[38] there is
+an epistle written from England by one Richardus Goliardus to _Omnibus
+in Gallia Goliae discipulis_, introducing a friend, asking for
+information _ordo vester qualis est_, and giving for the reason of
+this request _ne magis in ordine indiscrete vivam_. He addresses his
+French comrades as _pueri Goliae_, and winds up with good wishes for
+the _socios sanctae confratriae_. Proofs might be multiplied that the
+Wandering Students in Germany also regarded themselves as a
+confraternity, with special rules and ordinances. Of this, the curious
+parody of an episcopal letter, issued in 1209 by _Surianus, Praesul et
+Archiprimas_, to the _vagi clerici_ of Austria, Styria, Bavaria, and
+Moravia is a notable example.[39]
+
+I have treated Golias as the eponymous hero of this tribe, the chief
+of this confraternity. But it ought to be said that the name Golias
+occurs principally in English MSS., where the Goliardic poems are
+ascribed to _Golias Episcopus._ Elsewhere the same personage is spoken
+of as _Primas_, which is a title of dignity applying to a prelate with
+jurisdiction superior even to that of an archbishop. Grimm[40] quotes
+this phrase from a German chronicle: _Primas vagus multos versus
+edidit magistrates_. In the _Sequentia falsi evangelii_[41] we find
+twice repeated _Primas autem qui dicitur vilissimus_. The Venetian
+codex from which Grimm drew some of his texts[42] attributes the
+_Dispute of Thetis and Lyaeus_ and the _Advice against Matrimony_,
+both of which passed in England under the name of Golias and
+afterwards of Walter Map, to _Primas Presbyter_.
+
+With regard to this Primas, it is important to mention that Fra
+Salimbene in his Chronicle[43] gives a succinct account of him under
+the date 1233. It runs as follows: _Fuit his temporibus Primas
+canonicus eoloniensis, magnus trutannus et magnus trufator, et maximus
+versificator et velox, qui, si dedisset cor suum ad diligendum Deum,
+magnus in litteratura divina fuisset, et utilis valde_ _Ecclesiae
+Dei. Cujus Apocalypsim, quam fecerat, vidi, et alia scripta plura_.
+After this passage follow some anecdotes, with quotations of verses
+extemporised by Primas, and lastly the whole of the Confession,
+translated by me at p. 55 above. Thus Salimbene, who was almost a
+contemporary author, attributes to Primas two of the most important
+poems which passed in England under the name of Golias, while the
+Venetian MS. ascribes two others of the same class to Primas
+Presbyter. It is also very noteworthy that Salimbene expressly calls
+this Primas a Canon of Cologne.
+
+That this poet, whoever he was, had attained to celebrity in Italy (as
+well as in Germany) under the title of Primas, appears also from the
+following passage of a treatise by Thomas of Capua[44] on the Art of
+Writing: _Dictaminum vero tria sunt genera auctoribus diffinita,
+prosaicum scilicet, metricum et rithmicum; prosaicum ut Cassiodori,
+metricum ut Virgilii, rithmicum ut Primatis_. Boccaccio was in all
+probability referring to the same Primas in the tale he told about
+_Primasso_,[45] who is described as a man of European reputation, and
+a great and rapid versifier. It is curious that just as Giraldus seems
+to have accepted _Golias_ as the real name of this poet,[46] so Fra
+Salimbene, Thomas of Capua, and Boccaccio appear to use _Primas_ as a
+Christian name.
+
+The matter becomes still more complicated when we find, as we do, some
+of the same poems attributed in France to Walter of Lille, in England
+to Walter Map, and further current under yet another title of dignity,
+that of _Archipoeta_.[47]
+
+We can hardly avoid the conclusion that by Golias Episcopus, Primas,
+and Archipoeta one and the same person, occupying a prominent post in
+the Order, was denoted. He was the head of the Goliardic family, the
+Primate of the Wandering Students' Order, the Archpoet of these
+lettered minstrels. The rare excellence of the compositions ascribed
+to him caused them to be spread abroad, multiplied, and imitated in
+such fashion that it is now impossible to feel any certainty about the
+personality which underlay these titles.
+
+Though we seem frequently upon the point of touching the real man, he
+constantly eludes our grasp. Who he was, whether he was one or many,
+remains a mystery. Whether the poems which bear one or other of his
+changing titles were really the work of a single writer, is also a
+matter for fruitless conjecture. We may take it for granted that he
+was not Walter Map; for Map was not a Canon of Cologne, not a follower
+of Reinald von Dassel, not a mark for the severe scorn of Giraldus.
+Similar reasoning renders it more than improbable that the Golias of
+Giraldus, the Primas of Salimbene, and the petitioner to Reinald
+should have been Walter of Lille.[48]
+
+At the same time it is singular that the name of Walter should twice
+occur in Goliardic poems of a good period. One of these is the famous
+and beautiful lament:--
+
+ "Versa est in luctum--eithara Waltheri."
+
+This exists in the MS. of the _Carmina Burana_, but not in the Paris
+MS. of Walter's poems edited by Müldner.
+
+It contains allusions to the poet's ejection from his place in the
+Church--a misfortune which actually befell Walter of Lille. Grimm has
+printed another poem, _Saepe de miseria,_ in which the name of Walter
+occurs.[49] It is introduced thus:
+
+ "Hoc Gualtherus sub-prior
+ Jubet in decretis."
+
+Are we to infer from the designation _Sub-prior_ that the Walter of
+this poem held a post in the Order inferior to that of the Primas?
+
+It is of importance in this connection to bear in mind that five of
+the poems attributed in English MSS. to Golias and Walter Map, namely,
+_Missus sum in vineam_, _Multiformis hominum_, _Fallax est et
+mobilis_, _A tauro torrida_, _Heliconis rivulo_, _Tanto viro
+locuturi_, among which is the famous Apocalypse ascribed by Salimbene
+to Primas, are given to Walter of Lille in the Paris MS. edited by
+Müldner.[50] They are distinguished by a marked unity of style; and
+what is also significant, a lyric in this Paris MS., _Dum Gualterus
+aegrotaret_, introduces the poet's name in the same way as the _Versa
+est in luctum_ of the _Carmina Burana_. Therefore, without identifying
+Walter of Lille with the Primas, Archipoeta, and Golias, we must allow
+that his place in Goliardic literature is very considerable. But I am
+inclined to think that the weight of evidence favours chiefly the
+ascription of serious and satiric pieces to his pen. It is probable
+that the Archipoeta, the follower of Reinald von Dassel, the man who
+composed the most vigorous Goliardic poem we possess, and gave the
+impulse of his genius to that style of writing, was not the Walter of
+the _Versa est in luctum_ or of _Dum Gualterus aegrotaret_. That
+Walter must have been somewhat his junior; and it is not unreasonable
+to assume that he was Walter of Lille, who may perhaps be further
+identified with the _Gualtherus sub-prior_ of the poem on the author's
+poverty. This Walter's Latin designation, _Gualtherus de Insula_,
+helps, as I have observed above,[51] to explain the attribution of the
+Goliardic poems in general to Walter Map by English scribes of the
+fifteenth century.
+
+After all, it is safer to indulge in no constructive speculations
+where the matter of inquiry is both vague and meagre. One thing
+appears tolerably manifest; that many hands of very various dexterity
+contributed to form the whole body of songs which we call Goliardic.
+It is also clear that the Clerici Vagi considered themselves a
+confraternity, and that they burlesqued the institutions of a
+religious order, pretending to honour and obey a primate or bishop, to
+whom the nickname of Golias was given at the period in which they
+flourished most. Viewed in his literary capacity, this chief was
+further designated as the Archpoet. Of his personality we know as
+little as we do of that of Homer.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 36: Grimm's _Gedichte des Mittelalters_, p. 232.]
+
+[Footnote 37: _Carm. Bur._, p. 254.]
+
+[Footnote 38: Page 69.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Giesebrecht in _Allg. Monatschrift_. Jan. 1853. p. 35.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Op. cit., p. 182.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Ib., p. 232.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Ib., pp. 238, 239.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Published at Parma, 1857.]
+
+[Footnote 44: See Novati, _Carmina Medii Aevi_, p. 8, note.]
+
+[Footnote 45: _Decameron_, i, 7.]
+
+[Footnote 46: See above, p. 21.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Grimm, op. cit., p. 189 et seq.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Giesebrecht identifies Walter of Lille with the
+Archipoeta. But he seems to be unacquainted with Salimbene's
+Chronicle, and I agree with Hubatsch that he has not made out his
+point.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Op. cit., p. 235, also in _Carm. Bur._, p. 74.]
+
+[Footnote 50: Hannover, 1859.]
+
+[Footnote 51: Page 23.]
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS ON GOLIARDIC LITERATURE.
+
+
+Carmina Burana. Stuttgart. 1847.
+
+Thomas Wright. The Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes.
+ Camden Society. 1841.
+ ---- Anecdota Literaria. London. 1844.
+ ---- Early Mysteries, etc. London. 1844.
+
+Edelstand du Méril. Poésies Populaires Latines Antérieures au Douzième
+ Siècle. Paris. 1843.
+ ---- Poésies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age. Paris. 1847.
+ ---- Poésies Inédites du Moyen Age. Paris. 1854.
+
+Jacob Grimm. Gedichte des Mittelalters auf König Friedrich I., den
+ Staufer. Berlin. 1843.
+
+H. Hagen. Carmina Medii Aevi Max. Part. Inedita. Bern. 1877.
+
+F. Novati. Carmina Medii Aevi. Firenze. 1883.
+
+Mone. Anzeiger, vii.
+
+W. Müldener. Die Zehn Gedichte von Walther von Lille. Hannover. 1859,
+
+Champollion-Figeac. Hilarii Versus et Ludi. Paris. 1838.
+
+Gaudeamus. Leipzig. 1879.
+
+Carmina Clericorum. Heilbronn. 1880.
+
+A.P. Von Bärnstein. Carmina Burana Selecta. 1880.
+ ---- Ubi sunt qui ante nos? Würtzburg. 1881.
+
+Giesebrecht. Die Vaganten. Allg. Monatscrift für W. und K. 1853.
+
+O. Hubatsch. Die Lateinischen Vagantenlieder. Görlitz. 1870.
+
+A. Bartoli. I Precursori del Rinascimento, Firenze. 1876.
+
+Allgemeines Deutsches Commersbuch.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF SONGS TRANSLATED IN THIS VOLUME.
+
+
+N.B.--In order to facilitate the comparison between my translations
+and the originals, I have made the following table. The first column
+gives the number of the song and the second the page in this book; the
+third column gives the beginning of each song in English; the fourth
+gives the beginning of each song in Latin. The references in the fifth
+column are to the little anthology called _Gaudeamus_ (Leipzig,
+Teubner, 1879); those in the sixth column are to the printed edition
+of the Benedictbeuern Codex, which goes by the title of _Carmina
+Burana_ (Stuttgart, auf Kosten das Literarischen Vereins, Hering & Co.
+printers, 1847).
+
+
+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
+ |No.|Page.| English. | Latin. |Gaud.|Car. |
+ | | | | | |Bur. |
+ +---+-----+------------------------+--------------------+-----+-----+
+ | | | | |Page |Page |
+ | 1 | 42 | At the mandate | Cum in orbem | 3 | 251 |
+ | 2 | 47 | Once, it was | Olim nostrum | 6 | .. |
+ | 3 | 50 | I a wandering | Exul ego | 178 | 50 |
+ | 4 | 52 | We in our | Nos vagabunduli | 195 | .. |
+ | 5 | 55 | Boiling in my | Aestuans | 34 | 67 |
+ | 6 | 63 | Spring is coming | Ver redit | 88 | 178 |
+ | 7 | 64 | These hours of | Tempus est | 100 | 211 |
+ | 8 | 66 | Take your pleasure | Congaudentes | 90 | 166 |
+ | 9 | 67 | Winter's untruth | Vetus error | 86 | .. |
+ |10 | 68 | Winter, now | Cedit hiems | 85 | 177 |
+ |11 | 69 | Now the fields | Jam jam virent | 89 | 184 |
+ |12 | 70 | Spring returns | Ecce gratum | 84 | 83 |
+ |13 | 71 | Vernal hours | Vernum tempus | 81 | .. |
+ |14 | 72 | Hail thou | Salve ver | .. | 193 |
+ |15 | 74 | Summer sweet | Dum aestas | 97 | 196 |
+ |16 | 75 | The blithe young year | Anni novi | .. | 145 |
+ |17 | 76 | Now the sun | Omnia sol | 109 | 177 |
+ |18 | 77 | In the spring | Veris dulcis | .. | 195 |
+ |19 | 78 | With so sweet | De pollicito | 103 | 206 |
+ |20 | 79 | Wide the lime-tree | Late pandit | .. | 185 |
+ |21 | 80 | Yonder choir of | Ecce chorus | .. | 118 |
+ |22 | 82 | Meadows bloom | Virent prata | 98 | 189 |
+ |23 | 84 | Cast aside | Omittamus studia | 82 | 137 |
+ |24 | 87 | There went out | Exiit diluculo | 120 | 155 |
+ |25 | 87 | In the summer's | Aestivali sub | 125 | 145 |
+ |26 | 89 | All the woods | Florent omnes | 93 | 182 |
+ |27 | 91 | When the lamp | Dum Dianae | .. | 124 |
+ |28 | 95 | In the spring-time | Anni parte | .. | 155 |
+ |29 | 99 | On their steeds | Equitabant | .. | 162 |
+ |30 |106 | Take thou | Suscipe Flos | .. | 217 |
+ |31 |107 | Come to me | Veni veni | 102 | 208 |
+ |32 |109 | Lydia bright | Lydia bella | 96 | .. |
+ |33 |111 | When a young man | Si puer cum | 116 | 215 |
+ |34 |112 | Rudely blows | Saevit aurae | .. | 148 |
+ |35 |114 | Love rules | Amor tenet | 91 | 150 |
+ |36 |117 | List, my girl | Non contrecto | 118 | 150 |
+ |37 |118 | Think no evil | Ludo cum | 104 | 151 |
+ |38 |120 | With song I | Sic mea fata | 117 | 229 |
+ |39 |121 | False the tongue | Lingua mendax | 111 | 230 |
+ |40 |124 | A mortal anguish | Humor letalis | 114 | 169 |
+ |41 |127 | Up to this time | Huc usque | 119 | .. |
+ |42 |129 | Oh, of love | O comes | .. | 225 |
+ |43 |130 | Sweet native | Dulce solum | 110 | 168 |
+ |44 |132 | Oh, my father | Hecs pater | 175 | 172 |
+ |45 |136 | Wine the good | Vinum bonum | 17 | .. |
+ |46 |137 | In dulci jubilo | In dulci jubilo | 201 | .. |
+[52]|47 |139 | Ho all ye | .... | .. | .. |
+ |48 |140 | Laurel-crowned | Lauriger Horatius | 74 | .. |
+ |49 |141 | Sweet in | Dulce cum | 74 | .. |
+ |50 |142 | Ho! comrades | O consacii | 87 | 198 |
+ |51 |144 | Laying truth bare | Denudata | 57 | 232 |
+ |52 |151 | Topers in and | Potatores | 27 | 240 |
+ |53 |154 | Time was | Olim latus | 188 | 173 |
+ |54 |155 | While a boor | Rusticus dum | 189 | .. |
+ |55 |158 | I am the Abbot | Ego sum Abbas | 73 | 254 |
+[53]|56 |159 | Hear, O thou | Audi Tellus | .. | .. |
+ |57 |161 | While life's | Dum juventus | 135 | 8 |
+ |58 |162 | This vile world | Iste mundus | .. | 5 |
+ |59 |164 | De contemptu | Scribere proposni | 129 | .. |
+ |60 |165 | Let us live then | Gaudeamus igitur | 1 | .. |
+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 52: The original of this song will be found in Geiger,
+_Humanismus und Renaissance_, p. 414.]
+
+[Footnote 53: The original will be found in Moll, _Hymnarium_, p.
+138.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
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