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!