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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

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                        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 worl