No. 36.
List, my girl, with words I woo;
Lay not wanton hands on you:
Sit before you, in your face
Gazing, ah! and seeking grace:
Fix mine eyes, nor let them rove
From the mark where shafts of love
Their flight wing.
Try, my girl, O try what bliss
Young men render when they kiss!
Youth is alway sturdy, straight;
Old age totters in its gait.
These delights of love we bring
Have the suppleness of spring,
Softness, sweetness, wantoning;
Clasp, my Phyllis, in their ring
Sweeter sweets than poets sing,
Anything and everything!
After daytime's heat from heaven
Dews on thirsty fields are given;
After verdant leaf and stem
Shoots the white flower's diadem;
After the white flower's bloom
To the night their faint perfume
Lilies fling.
Try, my girl, etc., _da capo_.
The poem, _Ludo cum Caecilia_, which comes next in order, is one of
the most perfect specimens of Goliardic writing. To render its fluent,
languid, and yet airy grace, in any language but the Latin, is, I
think, impossible. Who could have imagined that the subtlety, the
refinement, almost the perversity of feeling expressed in it, should
have been proper to a student of the twelfth century? The poem is
spoiled toward its close by astrological and grammatical conceits; and
the text is corrupt. That part I have omitted, together with some
stanzas which offend a modern taste.