Part 20 (1/2)

And next that daunced Courtesye, That preised was of lowe and hye, For neither proude ne foole was she; She for to daunce called me, I pray G.o.d yeve hir right good grace, When I come first into the place.

She was not nyce ne outrageous, But wys and ware and vertuous; Of faire speche and of faire answere; Was never wight mysseid of her, Ne she bar rancour to no wight.

Clere browne she was, and thereto bright

Of face, of body avenaunt.

I wot no lady so pleasaunt.

She were worthy forto bene An empresse or crowned quene.

You can read for yourselves the characters, and can follow the simple action which owes its slight interest only to the constant effort of the dreamer to attain his ideal,--the Rose,--and owes its charm chiefly to the constant disappointment and final defeat. An undertone of sadness runs through it, felt already in the picture of Time which foreshadows the end of Love--the Rose--and her court, and with it the end of hope:--

Li tens qui s'en va nuit et jor, Sans repos prendre et sans sejor, Et qui de nous se part et emble Si celeement qu'il nous semble Qu'il s'arreste ades en un point, Et il ne s'i arreste point, Ains ne fine de trespa.s.ser, Que nus ne puet neis penser Quex tens ce est qui est presens; S'el demandes as clers lisans, Aincois que l'en l'eust pense Seroit il ja trois tens pa.s.se; Li tens qui ne puet sejourner, Ains vait tous jors sans retorner, Com l'iaue qui s'avale toute, N'il n'en retourne arriere goute; Li tens vers qui noient ne dure, Ne fer ne chose tant soit dure, Car il gaste tout et menjue; Li tens qui tote chose mue, Qui tout fait croistre et tout norist, Et qui tout use et tout porrist.

The tyme that pa.s.seth nyght and daye.

And restelesse travayleth aye, And steleth from us so prively, That to us semeth so sykerly That it in one poynt dwelleth never, But gothe so fast, and pa.s.seth aye

That there nys man that thynke may What tyme that now present is; Asketh at these clerkes this, For or men thynke it readily Thre tymes ben ypa.s.sed by.

The tyme that may not sojourne But goth, and may never returne, As water that down renneth ay, But never drope retourne may.

There may no thing as time endure, Metall nor earthly creature: For alle thing it frette and shall.

The tyme eke that chaungith all, And all doth waxe and fostered be, And alle thing distroieth he.

The note of sadness has begun, which the poets were to find so much more to their taste than the note of gladness. From the ”Roman de la Rose” to the ”Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis” was a short step for the Middle-Age giant Time,--a poor two hundred years. Then Villon woke up to ask what had become of the Roses:--Ou est la tres sage Helois Pour qui fut chastie puis moyne, Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis?

Pour son amour ot cest essoyne.

Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine Qu' Englois brulerent a Rouan; Ou sont elles, Vierge Souvraine?

Mais ou sont les neiges dantan?

Where is the virtuous Heloise, For whom suffered, then turned monk, Pierre Abelard at Saint-Denis?

For his love he bore that pain.

And Jeanne d'Arc, the good Lorraine, Whom the English burned at Rouen!

Where are they, Virgin Queen?

But where are the snows of spring?

Between the death of William of Lorris and the advent of John of Meung, a short half-century (1250-1300), the Woman and the Rose became bankrupt. Satire took the place of wors.h.i.+p. Man, with his usual monkey-like malice, took pleasure in pulling down what he had built up. The Frenchman had made what he called ”fausse route.”

William of Lorris was first to see it, and say it, with more sadness and less bitterness than Villon showed; he won immortality by telling how he, and the thirteenth century in him, had lost himself in pursuing his Rose, and how he had lost the Rose, too, waking up at last to the dull memory of pain and sorrow and death, that ”tout porrist.” The world had still a long march to make from the Rose of Queen Blanche to the guillotine of Madame du Barry; but the ”Roman de la Rose” made epoch. For the first time since Constantine proclaimed the reign of Christ, a thousand years, or so, before Philip the Fair dethroned Him, the deepest expression of social feeling ended with the word: Despair.

CHAPTER XIII

LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME

Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio, Umile ed alta piu che creatura, Termine fisso d'eterno consiglio, Tu sei colei che l'umana natura n.o.bilitasti si, che il suo fattore Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura....

La tua benignita non pur soccorre A chi dimanda, ma molte fiate Liberamente al dimandar precorre.