Avril | Page 6

he himself appears in his own verses, simple, charming, slight, but with memories of government and of arms.
This style well formed, half his verse written, he returned to his own place. He was in middle age--a man of fifty. He married soberly enough Mary of Cleves, ugly and young: he married her in order to cement the understanding with Burgundy. She did not love him with his shy florid face, long neck and features and mild eyes. His age for twenty-five years passed easily, he had reached his "castle of No Care." As late as 1462 his son (Louis XII) was born; his two daughters at long intervals before. His famous library moved with him as he went from town to town, and perpetually from himself and round him from his retinue ran the continual stream of verse which only ended with his death. His very doctor he compelled to rhyme.
All the singers of the time visited or remained with him--wild Villon for a moment, and after Villon a crowd of minor men. It was in such a company that he recited the last ironical but tender song wherein he talks of his lost youth and vigour and ends by bidding all present a salute in the name of his old age.
So he sat, half regal, holding a court of song in Blois and Tours, a forerunner in verse of what the new time was to build in stone along the Loire. And it was at Amboise that he died.
THE COMPLAINT.
(_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