Part 40 (1/2)

And the ballad is a shorter form, and the Elizabethan lyrics are but sc.r.a.ps and bits of canzoni much as in the ”nineties” men wrote sc.r.a.ps of Swinburne.

Charles d'Orleans made good roundels and songs, as in ”Dieu qui la fait” and in ”Quand j'oie la tambourine,” as did also Jean Froissart before him in:

Reviens, ami; trop longue est ta demeure: Elle me fait avoir peine et doulour.

Mon esperit te demande a toute heure.

Reviens, ami; trop longue est ta demeure.

Car il n'est nul, fors toi, qui me sequerre, Ne secourra, jusques a ton retour.

Reviens, ami; trop longue est ta demeure: Elle me fait avoir peine et doulour.

And in:

Le corps s'en va, mais le cur vous demeure.

And in:

On doit le temps ainsi prendre qu'il vient: Tout dit que pas ne dure la fortune.

Un temps se part, et puis l'autre revient: On doit le temps ainsi prendre qu'il vient.

Je me comforte en ce qu'il me souvient Que tous les mois avons nouvelle lune: On doit le temps ainsi prendre qu'il vient: Tout dit que pas ne dure la fortune.

Which is much what Bernart de Ventadour has sung:

”Per dieu, dona, pauc esplecham d'amor Va sen lo temps e perdem lo melhor.”

And Campion was the last, but in none of the later men is there the care and thought of En Arnaut Daniel for the blending of words sung out; and none of them all succeeded, as indeed he had not succeeded in reviving and making permanent a poetry that could be sung. But none of them all had thought so of the sound of the words with the music, all in sequence and set together as had En Arnaut of Ribeyrac, nor had, I think, even Dante Alighieri when he wrote ”De Eloquio.”

And we find in Provence beautiful poems, as by Vidal when he sings:

”Ab l'alen tir vas me l'aire,”

And by the Viscount of St. Antoni:

”Lo clar temps vei brunezir E'ls auzeletz esperdutz, Que'l fregz ten destregz e mutz E ses conort de jauzir.

Donc eu que de cor sospir Per la gensor re qu'anc fos, Tan joios Son, qu'ades m'es vis Que folh' e flor s'espandis.

D'amor son tug miei cossir....”

and by Bertrans de Born in ”Dompna puois di me,” but these people sang not so many diverse kinds of music as En Arnaut, nor made so many good poems in different fas.h.i.+ons, nor thought them so carefully, though En Bertrans sings with more vigor, it may be, and in the others, in Cerclamon, Arnaut of Marvoil, in de Ventadour, there are beautiful pa.s.sages. And if the art, now in France, of saying a song--_disia sons_, we find written of more than one troubadour--is like the art of En Arnaut, it has no such care for the words, nor such ear for hearing their consonance.

Nor among the Provencals was there any one, nor had Dante thought out an aesthetic of sound; of clear sounds and opaque sounds, such as in ”Sols sui,” an opaque sound like Swinburne at his best; and in ”Doutz brais”

and in ”L'aura amara” a clear sound, with staccato; and of heavy beats and of running and light beats, as very heavy in ”Can chai la fueilla.”

Nor do we enough notice how with his drollery he is in places nearer to Chaucer than to the Italians, and indeed the Provencal is usually nearer the English in sound and in feeling, than it is to the Italian, having a softer humor, not a bitter tongue, as have the Italians in ridicule.

Nor have any yet among students taken note enough of the terms, both of love terms, and of terms of the singing; though theology was precise in its terms, and we should see clearly enough in Dante's treatise when he uses such words as _pexa, hirsuta, lubrica_, combed, and s.h.a.ggy and oily to put his words into categories, that he is thinking exactly. Would the Age of Aquinas have been content with anything less? And so with the love terms, and so, as I have said in my Guido, with metaphors and the exposition of pa.s.sion. Cossir, solatz, plazers, have in them the beginning of the Italian philosophic precisions, and _amors qu'inz el cor mi plou_ is not a vague decoration. By the time of Petrarca the a.n.a.lysis had come to an end, only the vague decorations were left. And if Arnaut is long before Cavalcanti,

Pensar de lieis m'es repaus E traigom ams los huoills cranes, S'a lieis vezer nols estuich.