Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres Part 16

Dame, merci! donez moi esperance De joie avoir.

Aucuns si sont qui me vuelent blamer Quant je ne di a qui je suis amis; Mais ja, dame, ne saura mon penser Nus qui soit nes fors vous cui je le dis Couardement a pavours a doutance Dont puestes vous lors bien a ma semblance Mon cuer savoir.

Dame, merci! donez moi esperance De joie avoir.

There is no comfort to be found for pain Save only where the heart has made its home.

Therefore I can but murmur and complain Because no comfort to my pain has come From where I garnered all my happiness.

From true love have I only earned distress The truth to say.

Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess A hope, one day.

Seldom the music of her voice I hear Or wonder at the beauty of her eyes.

It grieves me that I may not follow there Where at her feet my heart attentive lies.

Oh, gentle Beauty without consciousness, Let me once feel a moment's hopefulness, If but one ray!

Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess A hope, one day.

Certain there are who blame upon me throw Because I will not tell whose love I seek; But truly, lady, none my thought shall know, None that is born, save you to whom I speak In cowardice and awe and doubtfulness, That you may happily with fearlessness My heart essay.

Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess A hope, one day.

Does Thibaut's verse sound simple? It is the simplicity of the thirteenth-century gla.s.s--so refined and complicated that sensible people are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any blunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as perfect as the colours, and the versification as elaborate. These stanzas might have been addressed to Queen Blanche; now see how Thibaut kept the same tone of courteous love in addressing the Queen of Heaven!

De grant travail et de pet.i.t esploit Voi ce siegle cargie et encombre Que tant somes plain de maleurte Ke nus ne pens a faire ce qu'il doit, Ains avons si le Deauble trouve Qu'a lui servir chascuns paine et essaie Et Diex ki ot pour nos ja cruel plaie Metons arrier et sa grant dignite; Molt est hardis qui pour mort ne s'esmaie.

Diex que tout set et tout puet et tout voit Nous auroit tost en entre-deus giete Se la Dame plaine de grant bonte Pardelez lui pour nos ne li prioit

Si tres douc mot plaisant et savoure Le grant courous dou grant Signour apaie; Molt par est fox ki autre amor essai K'en cestui n'a barat ne fausete Ne es autres n'a ne merti ne manaie.

La souris quiert pour son cors garandir Contre l'yver la noif et le forment Et nous chaitif nous n'alons rien querant Quant nous morrons ou nous puissions garir.

Nous ne cherchons fors k'infer le puant; Or esgardes come beste sauvage Pourvoit de loin encontre son domage Et nous n'avons ne sens ne hardement; Il est avis que plain somes de rage.

Li Deable a getey por nos ravir Quatre amecons aescbies de torment; Covoitise lance premierement Et puis Orguel por sa grant rois emplir Et Luxure va le batel trainant Felonie les governe et les nage.

Ensi peschant s'en viegnent au rivage Dont Diex nous gart par son commandement En qui sains fons nous feismes homage.

A la Dame qui tous les bien avance T'en va, chancon s'el te vielt escouter Onques ne fu nus di millor chaunce.

With travail great, and little cargo fraught, See how our world is labouring in pain; So filled we are with love of evil gain That no one thinks of doing what he ought, But we all hustle in the Devil's train, And only in his service toil and pray; And G.o.d, who suffered for us agony, We set behind, and treat him with disdain; Hardy is he whom death does not dismay.

G.o.d who rules all, from whom we can hide nought, Had quickly flung us back to nought again But that our gentle, gracious, Lady Queen Begged him to spare us, and our pardon wrought;

Striving with words of sweetness to restrain Our angry Lord, and his great wrath allay.

Felon is he who shall her love betray Which is pure truth, and falsehood cannot feign, While all the rest is lie and cheating play.

The feeble mouse, against the winter's cold, Garners the nuts and grain within his cell, While man goes groping, without sense to tell Where to seek refuge against growing old.

We seek it in the smoking mouth of h.e.l.l.

With the poor beast our impotence compare!

See him protect his life with utmost care, While us nor wit nor courage can compel To save our souls, so foolish mad we are.

The Devil doth in snares our life enfold; Four hooks has he with torments baited well; And first with Greed he casts a mighty spell, And then, to fill his nets, has Pride enrolled, And Luxury steers the boat, and fills the sail, And Perfidy controls and sets the snare; Thus the poor fish are brought to land, and there May G.o.d preserve us and the foe repel!

Homage to him who saves us from despair!

To Mary Queen, who pa.s.ses all compare, Go, little song! to her your sorrows tell!

Nor Heaven nor Earth holds happiness so rare.

CHAPTER XII

NICOLETTE AND MARION

C'est d'Auca.s.sins et de Nicolete.

Qui vauroit bons vers oir Del deport du viel caitiff De deus biax enfans petis Nicolete et Auca.s.sins; Des grans paines qu'il soufri Et des proueces qu'il fist For s'amie o le cler vis.

Dox est li cans biax est li dis Et cortois et bien asis.

Nus hom n'est si esbahis Tant dolans ni entrepris De grant mal amaladis Se il l'oit ne soit garis Et de joie resbaudis Tant par est dou-ce.

This is of Auca.s.sins and Nicolette.

Whom would a good ballad please By the captive from o'er-seas, A sweet song in children's praise, Nicolette and Auca.s.sins; What he bore for her caress, What he proved of his prowess For his friend with the bright face?

The song has charm, the tale has grace, And courtesy and good address.

No man is in such distress, Such suffering or weariness, Sick with ever such sickness, But he shall, if he hear this, Recover all his happiness, So sweet it is!

This little thirteenth-century gem is called a "chante-fable," a story partly in prose, partly in verse, to be sung according to musical notation accompanying the words in the single ma.n.u.script known, and published in facsimile by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon at Oxford in 1896. Indeed, few poems, old or new, have in the last few years been more reprinted, translated, and discussed, than "Auca.s.sins,"

yet the discussion lacks interest to the idle tourist, and tells him little. Nothing is known of the author or his date. The second line alone offers a hint, but nothing more. "Caitif" means in the first place a captive, and secondly any unfortunate or wretched man.

Critics have liked to think that the word means here a captive to the Saracens, and that the poet, like Cervantes three or four hundred years later, may have been a prisoner to the infidels. What the critics can do, we can do. If liberties can be taken with impunity by scholars, we can take the liberty of supposing that the poet was a prisoner in the crusade of Coeur-de-Lion and Philippe- Auguste; that he had recovered his liberty, with his master, in 1194; and that he pa.s.sed the rest of his life singing to the old Queen Eleanor or to Richard, at Chinon, and to the lords of all the chateaux in Guienne, Poitiers, Anjou, and Normandy, not to mention England. The living was a pleasant one, as the sunny atmosphere of the Southern poetry proves.

Dox est li cans; biax est li dis, Et cortois et bien asis.

The poet-troubadour who composed and recited "Auca.s.sins" could not have been unhappy, but this is the affair of his private life, and not of ours. What rather interests us is his poetic motive, "courteous love," which gives the tale a place in the direct line between Christian of Troyes, Thibaut-le-Grand, and William of Lorris. Christian of Troyes died in 1175; at least he wrote nothing of a later date, so far as is certainly known. Richard Coeur-de-Lion died in 1199, very soon after the death of his half-sister Mary of Champagne. Thibaut-le-Grand was born in 1201. William of Lorris, who concluded the line of great "courteous" poets, died in 1260 or thereabouts. For our purposes, "Auca.s.sins" comes between Christian of Troyes and William of Lorris; the trouvere or jogleor, who sang, was a "viel caitif" when the Chartres gla.s.s was set up, and the Charlemagne window designed, about 1210, or perhaps a little later.

When one is not a professor, one has not the right to make inept guesses, and, when one is not a critic, one should not risk confusing a difficult question by baseless a.s.sumptions; but even a summer tourist may without offence visit his churches in the order that suits him best; and, for our tour, "Auca.s.sins" follows Christian and goes hand in hand with Blondel and the chatelain de Coucy, as the most exquisite expression of "courteous love." As one of "Auca.s.sins'" German editors says in his introduction: "Love is the medium through which alone the hero surveys the world around him, and for which he contemns everything that the age prized: knightly honour; deeds of arms; father and mother; h.e.l.l, and even heaven; but the mere promise by his father of a kiss from Nicolette inspires him to superhuman heroism; while the old poet sings and smiles aside to his audience as though he wished them to understand that Auca.s.sins, a foolish boy, must not be judged quite seriously, but that, old as he was himself, he was just as foolish about Nicolette."