Avril | Page 6

frappent, abattent les Donjons.

Tirez, tirez bombardes, serpentines, Canons!
Whatever the cause, this spontaneity and freshness run through all the
mass of short and similar work which he wrote down.
The spring and sureness, the poise of these light nothings make them a
flight of birds.
See how direct is this:
Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder!
La gracieuse, bonne et belle.
or this:

Le lendemain du premier jour de Mai
Dedans mon lit ainsi que je
dormoye
Au point du jour advint que je sonjeay.
Everywhere his words make tunes for themselves and everywhere 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