(_The 57th Ballade of those written during his imprisonment._)
There is some dispute in the matter, but I will believe, as I have said,
that this dead Princess, for whose soul he prays, was certainly the wife
of his boyhood, a child whom Richard II had wed just before that
Lancastrian usurpation which is the irreparable disaster of English
history. She was, I say, a child--a widow in name--when Charles of
Orleans, himself in that small royal clique which was isolated and
shrivelling, married her as a mere matter of state. It is probable that
he grew to love her passionately, and perhaps still more her memory when
she had died in child-bed during those first years, even before
Agincourt, "en droicte fleur de jeunesse,"--for even here he is able to
find an exact and sufficient line.
There is surely to be noted in this delicate ballad, something more
native and truthful in its pathos than in the very many complaints he
left by way partly of reminiscence, partly of poetic exercise. For,
though he is restrained, as was the manner of his rank when they
attempted letters, yet you will not read it often without getting in you
a share of its melancholy.
That melancholy you can soon discover to be as permanent a quality in
the verse as it was in the mind of the man who wrote it.
_THE COMPLAINT._
_Las! Mort qui t'a fait si hardie,
De prendre la noble Princesse
Qui estoit mon confort, ma vie,
Mon bien, mon plaisir, ma richesse!
Puis que tu as prins ma maistresse,
Prens moy aussi son serviteur,
Car j'ayme mieulx prouchainement
Mourir que languir en tourment
En paine, soussi et doleur._
_Las! de tous biens estoit garnie
Et en droite fleur de jeunesse!
Je pry à Dieu qu'il te maudie,
Faulse Mort, plaine de rudesse!
Se prise l'eusses en vieillesse,
Ce ne fust pas si grant rigueur;
Mais prise l'as hastivement
Et m'as laissié piteusement
En paine, soussi et doleur._
_Las! je suis seul sans compaignie!
Adieu ma Dame, ma liesse!
Or est nostre amour departie,
Non pour tant, je vous fais promesse
Que de prieres, à largesse,
Morte vous serviray de cueur,
Sans oublier aucunement;
Et vous regretteray souvent
En paine, soussi et doleur._
_ENVOI._
_Dieu, sur tout souverain Seigneur,
Ordonnez, par grace et doulceur,
De l'ame d'elle, tellement
Qu'elle ne soit pas longuement
En paine, soussi et doleur._
THE TWO ROUNDELS OF SPRING.
(_The 41st and 43rd of the "Rondeaux."_)
These two Rondeaux, of which we may also presume, though very vaguely,
that they were written in England (for they are in the manner of his
earlier work), are by far the most famous of the many things he wrote;
and justly, for they have all these qualities.
_First_, they are exact specimens of their style. The Roundel should
interweave, repeat itself, and then recover its original strain, and
these two exactly give such unified diversity.
_Secondly_: they were evidently written in a moment of that unknown
power when words suggest something fuller than their own meaning, and in
which simplicity itself broadens the mind of the reader. So that it is
impossible to put one's finger upon this or that and say this adjective,
that order of the words has given the touch of vividness.
_Thirdly_: they have in them still a living spirit of reality; read them
to-day in Winter, and you feel the Spring. It is this quality perhaps
which most men have seized in them, and which have deservedly made them
immortal.
A further character which has added to their fame, is that, being
perfect lyrics, they are also specimens of an old-fashioned manner and
metre peculiar to the time. They are the resurrection not only of the
Spring, but of a Spring of the fifteenth century. Nor is it too
fantastic to say that one sees in them the last miniatures and the very
dress of a time that was intensely beautiful, and in which Charles of
Orleans alone did not feel death coming.
_THE TWO ROUNDELS OF SPRING._
_Les fourriers d'Esté sont venus
Pour appareillier son logis,
Et ont fait tendre ses tappis,
De fleurs et verdure tissus.
En estandant tappis velus
De verte herbe par le pais,
Les fourriers d'Esté sont venus
Pour appareillier son logis.
Cueurs d'ennuy pieça morfondus,
Dieu merci, sont sains et jolis;
Alez vous en, prenez pais,
Yver vous ne demourrez plus;
Les fourriers d'Esté sont venus._
_Le temps a laissié son manteau
De vent, de froidure et de pluye,
Et s'est vestu de brouderie,
De soleil luyant, cler et beau.
Il n'y a beste, ne oyseau,
Qu'en son jargon ne chant ou crie;
Le temps a laissié son manteau
De vent de froidure et de pluye.
Riviere, fontaine et ruisseau
Portent, en livrée jolie,
Gouttes d'argent d'orfavrerie,
Chascun s'abille de nouveau.
Le temps a laissié son manteau._
HIS LOVE AT MORNING.
(_The 6th of the "Songs"._)
In this delightful little song the spontaneity and freshness which saved
his work, its vigour and its clarity are best preserved.
It does indeed defy death and leaps four centuries: it is young and
perpetual. It thrills with something the failing middle ages had
forgotten: it reaches what they never reached, a climax, for one cannot
put too vividly the flash of the penultimate line, "I am granted a
vision when I think of her."
Yet it was written in later life, and who she was, or whether she lived
at all, no one knows.
_HIS LOVE AT MORNING._
_Dieu qu'il la fait bon regarder
La gracieuse bonne et belle!
Pour les grans biens qui sont en elle,
Chascun est prest de la louer
Qui se pourroit d'elle lasser!
Tousjours sa beaulté renouvelle.
Dieu, qu'il la fait bon regarder,
La gracieuse, bonne et belle!
Par deça, ne delà la mer,
Ne sçay Dame ne Damoiselle
Qui soit en tous biens parfais telle;
C'est un songe que d'y penser.
Dieu, qu'il la fait bon regarder!_
THE FAREWELL.
(_The 310th Roundel._)
Here is the last thing--we may presume--that Charles of Orleans ever
wrote: "Salute me all the company, I pray."
In that "company", not only the Court at Amboise, but the men of the
early wars, his companions, were round him, and the dead friends of his
gentle memory.
He was broken with age; he was already feeling the weight of isolation
from the Royal Family; he was beginning to suffer the insults of the
king. But, beneath all this, his gaiety still ran like a river under
ice, and in the ageing of a poet, humour and physical decline combined
make a good, human thing.
There is an excellent irony in the refrain: "Salute me, all the
company," whose double interpretation must not be missed, though it may
seem far-fetched.
Till the last line it means, without any question, "Salute the company
in my name," but I think there runs through it also, the hint of "Salute
me for my years, all you present who are young," and that this certainly
is the note in the last line of all. It must be remembered of the
French, that they never expand or explain their ironical things, for in
art it is their nature to detest excess.
This last thing of his, then, I say, is the most characteristic of him
and of his Valois blood, and of the national spirit in general to which
he belonged: for he, and it, and they, loved and love contrast, and the
extra-meaning of words.
_THE FAREWELL._
_Saluez moy toute la compaignie
Où à present estes à chiere lie,
Et leur dictes que voulentiers seroye
Avecques eulx, mais estre n'y porroye,
Pour Vieillesse qui m'a en sa baillie.
Au temps passé, Jeunesse si jolie
Me gouvernoit; las! or n'y suis je mye,
Et pour cela pour Dieu, que excusé soye;
Saluez moy toute la compaignie
Où à present estes à chiere lie,
Et leur dictes que voulentiers seroye.
Amoureux fus, or ne le suis je mye,
Et en Paris menoye bonne vie;
Adieu Bon temps ravoir ne vous saroye,
Bien sanglé fus d'une estroite courroye.
Que, par Aige, convient que la deslie.
Saluez moy toute la compaignie._