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.