POEMS AND
  TRANSLATIONS

  BY JOHN M. SYNGE

  MAUNSEL & COMPANY, LTD
  96 MIDDLE ABBEY ST. DUBLIN
  1911




  Cuala Press Edition. 1909.      Copyright.   John Quinn.  1909
  Reprinted with additions (Collected Works of J. M. Synge) 1910
  All rights reserved

  Printed by Maunsel and Co., Ltd., Dublin




CONTENTS


  POEMS

  PREFACE                            _p._ xi

  QUEENS                                   1

  IN KERRY                                 3

  A WISH                                   4

  THE ’MERGENCY MAN                        5

  DANNY                                    6

  PATCH-SHANEEN                            8

  ON AN ISLAND                            10

  BEG-INNISH                              11

  EPITAPH                                 12

  THE PASSING OF THE SHEE                 13

  ON AN ANNIVERSARY                       14

  THE OAKS OF GLENCREE                    15

  A QUESTION                              16

  DREAD                                   17

  IN GLENCULLEN                           18

  I’VE THIRTY MONTHS                      19

  EPITAPH                                 20

  PRELUDE                                 21

  IN MAY                                  22

  ON A BIRTHDAY                           23

  WINTER                                  24

  THE CURSE                               25


TRANSLATIONS FROM PETRARCH SONNETS FROM “LAURA IN DEATH”

  LAURA BEING DEAD, PETRARCH FINDS
  TROUBLE IN ALL THE THINGS OF
  THE EARTH                               29

  HE ASKS HIS HEART TO RAISE ITSELF
  UP TO GOD                               30

  HE WISHES HE MIGHT DIE AND FOLLOW
  LAURA                                   31

  LAURA IS EVER PRESENT TO HIM            32

  HE CEASES TO SPEAK OF HER GRACES
  AND HER VIRTUES WHICH ARE NO
  MORE                                    33

  HE IS JEALOUS OF THE HEAVENS AND
  THE EARTH                               34

  THE FINE TIME OF THE YEAR INCREASES
  PETRARCH’S SORROW                       35

  HE UNDERSTANDS THE GREAT CRUELTY
  OF DEATH                                36

  THE SIGHT OF LAURA’S HOUSE REMINDS
  HIM OF THE GREAT HAPPINESS HE
  HAS LOST                                37

  HE SENDS HIS RHYMES TO THE TOMB
  OF LAURA TO PRAY HER TO CALL
  HIM TO HER                              38

  ONLY HE WHO MOURNS HER, AND
  HEAVEN THAT POSSESSES HER, KNEW
  HER WHILE SHE LIVED                     39

  LAURA WAITS FOR HIM IN HEAVEN           40


TRANSLATIONS FROM VILLON AND OTHERS

  PRAYER OF THE OLD WOMAN, VILLON’S
  MOTHER                                  43

  AN OLD WOMAN’S LAMENTATIONS             44

  COLIN MUSSET, AN OLD POET, COMPLAINS
  TO HIS PATRON                           46

  WALTER VON DER VOGELWEIDE               48

  LEOPARDI--SILVIA                        49




POEMS




PREFACE


I have often thought that at the side of the poetic diction, which
everyone condemns, modern verse contains a great deal of poetic
material, using poetic in the same special sense. The poetry of
exaltation will be always the highest; but when men lose their poetic
feeling for ordinary life, and cannot write poetry of ordinary things,
their exalted poetry is likely to lose its strength of exaltation,
in the way men cease to build beautiful churches when they have lost
happiness in building shops.

Many of the older poets, such as Villon and Herrick and Burns, used the
whole of their personal life as their material, and the verse written
in this way was read by strong men, and thieves, and deacons, not
by little cliques only. Then, in the town writing of the eighteenth
century, ordinary life was put into verse that was not poetry, and when
poetry came back with Coleridge and Shelley, it went into verse that
was not always human.

In these days poetry is usually a flower of evil or good; but it is the
timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that
has not strong roots among the clay and worms.

Even if we grant that exalted poetry can be kept successful by itself,
the strong things of life are needed in poetry also, to show that what
is exalted or tender is not made by feeble blood. It may almost be said
that before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.

The poems which follow were written at different times during the last
sixteen or seventeen years, most of them before the views just stated,
with which they have little to do, had come into my head.

The translations are sometimes free, and sometimes almost literal,
according as seemed most fitting with the form of language I have used.

                                         J. M. S.

GLENAGEARY, _December, 1908_.




QUEENS


    Seven dog-days we let pass
    Naming Queens in Glenmacnass,
    All the rare and royal names
    Wormy sheepskin yet retains:
    Etain, Helen, Maeve, and Fand,
    Golden Deirdre’s tender hand;
    Bert, the big-foot, sung by Villon,
    Cassandra, Ronsard found in Lyon.
    Queens of Sheba, Meath, and Connaught,
    Coifed with crown, or gaudy bonnet;
    Queens whose finger once did stir men,
    Queens were eaten of fleas and vermin,
    Queens men drew like Monna Lisa,
    Or slew with drugs in Rome and Pisa.
    We named Lucrezia Crivelli,
    And Titian’s lady with amber belly,
    Queens acquainted in learned sin,
    Jane of Jewry’s slender shin:
    Queens who cut the bogs of Glanna,
    Judith of Scripture, and Gloriana,
    Queens who wasted the East by proxy,
    Or drove the ass-cart, a tinker’s doxy.
    Yet these are rotten--I ask their pardon--
    And we’ve the sun on rock and garden;
    These are rotten, so you’re the Queen
    Of all are living, or have been.




IN KERRY


    We heard the thrushes by the shore and sea,
    And saw the golden stars’ nativity,
    Then round we went the lane by Thomas Flynn,
    Across the church where bones lie out and in;
    And there I asked beneath a lonely cloud
    Of strange delight, with one bird singing loud,
    What change you’d wrought in graveyard, rock and sea,
    This new wild paradise to wake for me....
    Yet knew no more than knew those merry sins
    Had built this stack of thigh-bones, jaws and shins.




A WISH


    May seven tears in every week
    Touch the hollow of your cheek,
    That I--signed with such a dew--
    For a lion’s share may sue
    Of the roses ever curled
    Round the May-pole of the world.

    Heavy riddles lie in this,
    Sorrow’s sauce for every kiss.




THE ’MERGENCY MAN


    He was lodging above in Coom,
    And he’d the half of the bailiff’s room.

    Till a black night came in Coomasaharn
    A night of rains you’d swamp a star in.

    “To-night,” says he, “with the devil’s weather
    The hares itself will quit the heather.

    I’ll catch my boys with a latch on the door,
    And serve my process on near a score.”

    The night was black at the fording place,
    And the flood was up in a whitened race,
    But devil a bit he’d turn his face.

    Then the peelers said, “Now mind your lepping,
    How can you see the stones for stepping?

    “We’ll wash our hands of your bloody job.”
    “Wash and welcome,” says he, “begob.”

    He made two leps with a run and dash,
    Then the peelers heard a yell and splash;

    And the ’mergency man in two days and a bit
    Was found in the ebb tide stuck in a net.




DANNY


    One night a score of Erris men,
    A score I’m told and nine,
    Said, “We’ll get shut of Danny’s noise
    Of girls and widows dyin’.

    “There’s not his like from Binghamstown
    To Boyle and Ballycroy,
    At playing hell on decent girls,
    At beating man and boy.

    “He’s left two pairs of female twins
    Beyond in Killacreest,
    And twice in Crossmolina fair
    He’s struck the parish priest.

    “But we’ll come round him in the night
    A mile beyond the Mullet;
    Ten will quench his bloody eyes,
    And ten will choke his gullet.”

    It wasn’t long till Danny came,
    From Bangor making way,
    And he was damning moon and stars
    And whistling grand and gay.

    Till in a gap of hazel glen--
    And not a hare in sight--
    Out lepped the nine-and-twenty lads
    Along his left and right.

    Then Danny smashed the nose on Byrne,
    He split the lips on three,
    And bit across the right hand thumb
    On one Red Shawn Magee.

    But seven tripped him up behind,
    And seven kicked before,
    And seven squeezed around his throat
    Till Danny kicked no more.

    Then some destroyed him with their heels,
    Some tramped him in the mud,
    Some stole his purse and timber pipe,
    And some washed off his blood.

           *       *       *       *       *

    And when you’re walking out the way
    From Bangor to Belmullet,
    You’ll see a flat cross on a stone
    Where men choked Danny’s gullet.




PATCH-SHANEEN


    Shaneen and Maurya Prendergast
    Lived west in Carnareagh,
    And they’d a cur-dog, cabbage plot,
    A goat, and cock of hay.

    He was five foot one or two,
    Herself was four foot ten,
    And he went travelling asking meal
    Above through Caragh Glen.

    She’d pick her bag of carrageen
    Or perries through the surf,
    Or loan an ass of Foxy Jim
    To fetch her creel of turf.

    Till on one windy Samhain night,
    When there’s stir among the dead,
    He found her perished, stiff and stark,
    Beside him in the bed.

    And now when Shaneen travels far
    From Droum to Ballyhyre
    The women lay him sacks or straw,
    Beside the seed of fire.

    And when the grey cocks crow and flap,
    And winds are in the sky,
    “Oh, Maurya, Maurya, are you dead?”
    You’ll hear Patch-Shaneen cry.




ON AN ISLAND


    You’ve plucked a curlew, drawn a hen,
    Washed the shirts of seven men,
    You’ve stuffed my pillow, stretched the sheet,
    And filled the pan to wash your feet,
    You’ve cooped the pullets, wound the clock,
    And rinsed the young men’s drinking crock;
    And now we’ll dance to jigs and reels,
    Nailed boots chasing girls’ naked heels,
    Until your father’ll start to snore,
    And Jude, now you’re married, will stretch on the floor.




BEG-INNISH


    Bring Kateen-beug and Maurya Jude
    To dance in Beg-Innish,
    And when the lads (they’re in Dunquin)
    Have sold their crabs and fish,
    Wave fawny shawls and call them in,
    And call the little girls who spin,
    And seven weavers from Dunquin,
    To dance in Beg-Innish.

    I’ll play you jigs, and Maurice Kean,
    Where nets are laid to dry,
    I’ve silken strings would draw a dance
    From girls are lame or shy;
    Four strings I’ve brought from Spain and France
    To make your long men skip and prance,
    Till stars look out to see the dance
    Where nets are laid to dry.

    We’ll have no priest or peeler in
    To dance in Beg-Innish;
    But we’ll have drink from M’riarty Jim
    Rowed round while gannets fish,
    A keg with porter to the brim,
    That every lad may have his whim,
    Till we up sails with M’riarty Jim
    And sail from Beg-Innish.




EPITAPH

_After reading Ronsard’s lines from Rabelais_


    If fruits are fed on any beast
    Let vine-roots suck this parish priest,
    For while he lived, no summer sun
    Went up but he’d a bottle done,
    And in the starlight beer and stout
    Kept his waistcoat bulging out.

    Then Death that changes happy things
    Damned his soul to water springs.




THE PASSING OF THE SHEE

_After looking at one of A. E.’s pictures_


    Adieu, sweet Angus, Maeve, and Fand,
    Ye plumed yet skinny Shee,
    That poets played with hand in hand
    To learn their ecstasy.

    We’ll stretch in Red Dan Sally’s ditch,
    And drink in Tubber fair,
    Or poach with Red Dan Philly’s bitch
    The badger and the hare.




ON AN ANNIVERSARY

_After reading the dates in a book of Lyrics._


    With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen
    We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green:
    Then Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine,
    Is Crashaw’s niche, that honey-lipped divine.
    And so when all my little work is done
    They’ll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one,
    And died in Dublin.... What year will they write
    For my poor passage to the stall of night?




TO THE OAKS OF GLENCREE


    My arms are round you, and I lean
    Against you, while the lark
    Sings over us, and golden lights, and green
    Shadows are on your bark.

    There’ll come a season when you’ll stretch
    Black boards to cover me:
    Then in Mount Jerome I will lie, poor wretch,
    With worms eternally.




A QUESTION


    I asked if I got sick and died, would you
    With my black funeral go walking too,
    If you’d stand close to hear them talk or pray
    While I’m let down in that steep bank of clay.

    And, No, you said, for if you saw a crew
    Of living idiots pressing round that new
    Oak coffin--they alive, I dead beneath
    That board--you’d rave and rend them with your teeth.




DREAD


    Beside a chapel I’d a room looked down,
    Where all the women from the farms and town,
    On Holy-days and Sundays used to pass
    To marriages, and christenings, and to Mass.

    Then I sat lonely watching score and score,
    Till I turned jealous of the Lord next door....
    Now by this window, where there’s none can see,
    The Lord God’s jealous of yourself and me.




IN GLENCULLEN


    Thrush, linnet, stare and wren,
    Brown lark beside the sun,
    Take thought of kestril, sparrow-hawk,
    Birdlime and roving gun.

    You great-great-grand-children
    Of birds I’ve listened to,
    I think I robbed your ancestors
    When I was young as you.




I’VE THIRTY MONTHS


    I’ve thirty months, and that’s my pride,
    Before my age’s a double score,
    Though many lively men have died
    At twenty-nine or little more.

    I’ve left a long and famous set
    Behind some seven years or three,
    But there are millions I’d forget
    Will have their laugh at passing me.

 25, IX, 1908.




EPITAPH


    A silent sinner, nights and days,
    No human heart to him drew nigh,
    Alone he wound his wonted ways,
    Alone and little loved did die.

    And autumn Death for him did choose,
    A season dank with mists and rain,
    And took him, while the evening dews
    Were settling o’er the fields again.




PRELUDE


    Still south I went and west and south again,
    Through Wicklow from the morning till the night,
    And far from cities, and the sights of men,
    Lived with the sunshine, and the moon’s delight.

    I knew the stars, the flowers, and the birds,
    The grey and wintry sides of many glens,
    And did but half remember human words,
    In converse with the mountains, moors, and fens.




IN MAY


    In a nook
    That opened south,
    You and I
    Lay mouth to mouth.

    A snowy gull
    And sooty daw
    Came and looked
    With many a caw;

    “Such,” I said,
    “Are I and you,
    When you’ve kissed me
    Black and blue!”




ON A BIRTHDAY


    Friend of Ronsard, Nashe, and Beaumont,
    Lark of Ulster, Meath, and Thomond,
    Heard from Smyrna and Sahara
    To the surf of Connemara,
    Lark of April, June, and May,
    Sing loudly this my Lady-day.




WINTER

_With little money in a great city_


    There’s snow in every street
    Where I go up and down,
    And there’s no woman, man, or dog
    That knows me in the town.

    I know each shop, and all
    These Jews, and Russian Poles,
    For I go walking night and noon
    To spare my sack of coals.




THE CURSE.

_To a sister of an enemy of the author’s who disapproved of “The
Playboy.”_


    Lord, confound this surly sister,
    Blight her brow with blotch and blister,
    Cramp her larynx, lung, and liver,
    In her guts a galling give her.

    Let her live to earn her dinners
    In Mountjoy with seedy sinners:
    Lord, this judgment quickly bring,
    And I’m your servant, J. M. Synge.




  TRANSLATIONS FROM
  PETRARCH




SONNETS FROM “LAURA IN DEATH”




LAURA BEING DEAD, PETRARCH FINDS TROUBLE IN ALL THE THINGS OF THE EARTH


Life is flying from me, not stopping an hour, and Death is making great
strides following my track. The days about me and the days passed over
me, are bringing me desolation, and the days to come will be the same
surely.

All things that I am bearing in mind, and all things I am in dread of,
are keeping me in troubles, in this way one time, in that way another
time, so that if I wasn’t taking pity on my own self it’s long ago I’d
have given up my life.

If my dark heart has any sweet thing it is turned away from me, and
then farther off I see the great winds where I must be sailing. I see
my good luck far away in the harbour, but my steersman is tired out,
and the masts and the ropes on them are broken, and the beautiful
lights where I would be always looking are quenched.




HE ASKS HIS HEART TO RAISE ITSELF UP TO GOD


What is it you’re thinking, lonesome heart? For what is it you’re
turning back ever and always to times that are gone away from you? For
what is it you’re throwing sticks on the fire where it is your own self
that is burning?

The little looks and sweet words you’ve taken one by one and written
down among your songs, are gone up into the Heavens, and it’s late, you
know well, to go seeking them on the face of the earth.

Let you not be giving new life every day to your own destruction, and
following a fool’s thoughts for ever. Let you seek Heaven when there
is nothing left pleasing on the earth, and it a poor thing if a great
beauty, the like of her, would be destroying your peace and she living
or dead.




HE WISHES HE MIGHT DIE AND FOLLOW LAURA


In the years of her age the most beautiful and the most flowery--the
time Love has his mastery--Laura, who was my life, has gone away
leaving the earth stripped and desolate. She has gone up into the
Heavens, living and beautiful and naked, and from that place she is
keeping her Lordship and her rein upon me, and I crying out: Ohone,
when will I see that day breaking that will be my first day with
herself in Paradise?

My thoughts are going after her, and it is that way my soul would
follow her, lightly, and airily, and happily, and I would be rid of all
my great troubles. But what is delaying me is the proper thing to lose
me utterly, to make me a greater weight on my own self.

Oh, what a sweet death I might have died this day three years to-day!




LAURA IS EVER PRESENT TO HIM


If the birds are making lamentation, or the green banks are moved by a
little wind of summer, or you can hear the waters making a stir by the
shores that are green and flowery.

That’s where I do be stretched out thinking of love, writing my songs,
and herself that Heaven shows me though hidden in the earth I set my
eyes on, and hear the way that she feels my sighs and makes an answer
to me.

“Alas,” I hear her say, “why are you using yourself up before the time
is come, and pouring out a stream of tears so sad and doleful.

“You’d do right to be glad rather, for in dying I won days that have no
ending, and when you saw me shutting up my eyes I was opening them on
the light that is eternal.”




HE CEASES TO SPEAK OF HER GRACES AND HER VIRTUES WHICH ARE NO MORE


The eyes that I would be talking of so warmly, and the arms, and the
hands, and the feet, and the face that are after calling me away from
myself, and making me a lonesome man among all people.

The hair that was of shining gold, and brightness of the smile that was
the like of an angel’s surely, and was making a paradise of the earth,
are turned to a little dust that knows nothing at all.

And yet I myself am living; it is for this I am making a complaint to
be left without the light I had such a great love for, in good fortune
and bad, and this will be the end of my songs of love, for the vein
where I had cleverness is dried up, and every thing I have is turned to
complaint only.




HE IS JEALOUS OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH


What a grudge I am bearing the earth that has its arms about her, and
is holding that face away from me, where I was finding peace from great
sadness.

What a grudge I am bearing the Heavens that are after taking her, and
shutting her in with greediness, the Heavens that do push their bolt
against so many.

What a grudge I am bearing the blessed saints that have got her sweet
company, that I am always seeking; and what a grudge I am bearing
against Death, that is standing in her two eyes, and will not call me
with a word.




THE FINE TIME OF THE YEAR INCREASES PETRARCH’S SORROW


The south wind is coming back, bringing the fine season, and the
flowers, and the grass, her sweet family, along with her. The swallow
and the nightingale are making a stir, and the spring is turning white
and red in every place.

There is a cheerful look on the meadows, and peace in the sky, and the
sun is well pleased, I’m thinking, looking downward, and the air and
the waters and the earth herself are full of love, and every beast is
turning back looking for its mate.

And what is coming to me is great sighing and trouble, which herself is
drawing out of my deep heart, herself that has taken the key of it up
to Heaven.

And it is this way I am, that the singing birds, and the flowers of the
earth, and the sweet ladies, with their grace and comeliness, are the
like of a desert to me, and wild beasts astray in it.




HE UNDERSTANDS THE GREAT CRUELTY OF DEATH


My flowery and green age was passing away, and I feeling a chill in the
fires had been wasting my heart, for I was drawing near the hillside
that is above the grave.

Then my sweet enemy was making a start, little by little, to give over
her great wariness, the way she was wringing a sweet thing out of
my sharp sorrow. The time was coming when Love and Decency can keep
company, and lovers may sit together and say out all things are in
their hearts. But Death had his grudge against me, and he got up in the
way, like an armed robber, with a pike in his hand.




  THE SIGHT OF LAURA’S HOUSE
  REMINDS HIM OF THE GREAT
  HAPPINESS HE HAS LOST


Is this the nest in which my Phœnix put on her feathers of gold and
purple, my Phœnix that did hold me under her wing, and she drawing out
sweet words and sighs from me? Oh, root of my sweet misery, where is
that beautiful face, where light would be shining out, the face that
did keep my heart like a flame burning? She was without a match upon
the earth, I hear them say, and now she is happy in the Heavens.

And she has left me after her dejected and lonesome, turning back all
times to the place I do be making much of for her sake only, and I
seeing the night on the little hills where she took her last flight up
into the Heavens, and where one time her eyes would make sunshine and
it night itself.




  HE SENDS HIS RHYMES TO THE
  TOMB OF LAURA TO PRAY HER
  TO CALL HIM TO HER


Let you go down, sorrowful rhymes, to the hard rock is covering my dear
treasure, and then let you call out till herself that is in the Heavens
will make answer, though her dead body is lying in a shady place.

Let you say to her that it is tired out I am with being alive, with
steering in bad seas, but I am going after her step by step, gathering
up what she let fall behind her.

It is of her only I do be thinking, and she living and dead, and now I
have made her with my songs so that the whole world may know her, and
give her the love that is her due.

May it please her to be ready for my own passage that is getting near;
may she be there to meet me, herself in the Heavens, that she may call
me, and draw me after her.




  ONLY HE WHO MOURNS HER AND
  HEAVEN THAT POSSESSES HER,
  KNEW HER WHILE SHE LIVED


Ah, Death, it is you that have left the world cold and shady, with
no sun over it. It’s you have left Love without eyes or arms to him,
you’ve left liveliness stripped, and beauty without a shape to her,
and all courtesy in chains, and honesty thrown down into a hole. I am
making lamentation alone, though it isn’t myself only has a cause to be
crying out; since you, Death, have crushed the first seed of goodness
in the whole world, and with it gone what place will we find a second?

The air and the earth and seas would have a good right to be crying
out--and they pitying the race of men that is left without herself,
like a meadow without flowers or a ring robbed of jewellery.

The world didn’t know her the time she was in it, but I myself knew
her--and I left now to be weeping in this place; and the Heavens knew
her, the Heavens that are giving an ear this day to my crying out.




LAURA WAITS FOR HIM IN HEAVEN


The first day she passed up and down through the Heavens, gentle and
simple were left standing, and they in great wonder, saying one to the
other:

“What new light is that? What new beauty at all? The like of herself
hasn’t risen up these long years from the common world.”

And herself, well pleased with the Heavens, was going forward, matching
herself with the most perfect that were before her, yet one time, and
another, waiting a little, and turning her head back to see if myself
was coming after her. It’s for that I’m lifting up all my thoughts and
will into the Heavens, because I do hear her praying that I should be
making haste for ever.




  TRANSLATIONS FROM
  VILLON AND OTHERS




VILLON

PRAYER OF THE OLD WOMAN, VILLON’S MOTHER


Mother of God that’s Lady of the Heavens, take myself, the poor sinner,
the way I’ll be along with them that’s chosen.

Let you say to your own Son that He’d have a right to forgive my share
of sins, when it’s the like He’s done, many’s the day, with big and
famous sinners. I’m a poor aged woman, was never at school, and is
no scholar with letters, but I’ve seen pictures in the chapel with
Paradise on one side, and harps and pipes in it, and the place on the
other side, where sinners do be boiled in torment; the one gave me
great joy, the other a great fright and scaring; let me have the good
place, Mother of God, and it’s in your faith I’ll live always.

It’s yourself that bore Jesus, that has no end or death, and He the
Lord Almighty, that took our weakness and gave Himself to sorrows, a
young and gentle man. It’s Himself is our Lord surely, and it’s in that
faith I’ll live always.




VILLON

AN OLD WOMAN’S LAMENTATIONS


The man I had a love for--a great rascal would kick me in the
gutter--is dead thirty years and over it, and it is I am left behind,
grey and aged. When I do be minding the good days I had, minding what I
was one time, and what it is I’m come to, and when I do look on my own
self, poor and dry, and pinched together, it wouldn’t be much would set
me raging in the streets.

Where is the round forehead I had, and the fine hair, and the two
eyebrows, and the eyes with a big gay look out of them would bring
folly from a great scholar? Where is my straight, shapely nose, and two
ears, and my chin with a valley in it, and my lips were red and open?

Where are the pointed shoulders were on me, and the long arms and nice
hands to them? Where is my bosom was as white as any, or my straight
rounded sides?

It’s the way I am this day--my forehead is gone away into furrows, the
hair of my head is grey and whitish, my eyebrows are tumbled from me,
and my two eyes have died out within my head--those eyes that would
be laughing to the men--my nose has a hook on it, my ears are hanging
down, and my lips are sharp and skinny.

That’s what’s left over from the beauty of a right woman--a bag of
bones, and legs the like of two shrivelled sausages going beneath it.

It’s of the like of that we old hags do be thinking, of the good times
are gone away from us, and we crouching on our hunkers by a little fire
of twigs, soon kindled and soon spent, we that were the pick of many.




  COLIN MUSSET, AN OLD POET,
  COMPLAINS TO HIS PATRON

_From the Old French_


I’m getting old in your big house, and you’ve never stretched your hand
with a bit of gold to me, or a day’s wages itself. By my faith in Mary,
it’s not that way I’ll serve you always, living on my pocket, with a
few coppers only, and a small weight in my bag. You’ve had me to this
day, singing on your stairs before you, but I’m getting a good mind to
be going off, when I see my purse flattened out, and my wife does be
making a fool of me from the edge of the door.

It’s another story I hear when I come home at night and herself looks
behind me, and sets her eye on my bag stuffed to bursting, and I maybe
with a grey, decent coat on my back. It’s that time she’s not long
leaving down her spinning and coming with a smile, ready to choke me
with her two hands squeezing my neck. It’s then my sons have a great
rage to be rubbing the sweat from my horse, and my daughter isn’t long
wringing the necks on a pair of chickens, and making a stew in the pot.
It’s that day my youngest will bring me a towel, and she with nice
manners.... It’s a full purse, I tell you, makes a man lord in his own
house.




  WALTER VON DER
  VOGELWEIDE


I never set my two eyes on a head was so fine as your head, but I’d no
way to be looking down into your heart.

It’s for that I was tricked out and out--that was the thanks I got for
being so steady in my love.

I tell you, if I could have laid my hands on the whole set of the
stars, the moon and the sun along with it, by Christ I’d have given the
lot to her. No place have I set eyes on the like of her; she’s bad to
her friends, and gay and playful with those she’d have a right to hate.
I ask you can that behaviour have a good end come to it?




LEOPARDI

SILVIA


Are you bearing in mind that time when there was a fine look out of
your eyes, and yourself, pleased and thoughtful, were going up the
boundaries that are set to childhood? That time the quiet rooms, and
the lanes about the house, would be noisy with your songs that were
never tired out; the time you’d be sitting down with some work that is
right for women, and well pleased with the hazy coming times you were
looking out at in your own mind.

May was sweet that year, and it was pleasantly you’d pass the day.

Then I’d leave my pleasant studies, and the paper I had smudged with
ink where I would be spending the better part of the day, and cock my
ears from the sill of my father’s house, till I’d hear the sound of
your voice, or of your loom when your hands moved quickly. It’s then I
would set store of the quiet sky and the lanes and little places, and
the sea was far away in one place and the high hills in another.

There is no tongue will tell till the judgment what I feel in myself
those times.

       *       *       *       *       *




Transcriber’s note


Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.