LAURA WAITS FOR HIM IN HEAVEN
The first day she passed up and down through the Heavens, gentle and simple were left standing, and they in great wonder, saying one to the other:
“What new light is that? What new beauty at all? The like of herself hasn’t risen up these long years from the common world.”
And herself, well pleased with the Heavens, was going forward, matching herself with the most perfect that were before her, yet one time, and another, waiting a little, and turning her head back to see if myself was coming after her. It’s for that I’m lifting up all my thoughts and will into the Heavens, because I do hear her praying that I should be making haste for ever.
TRANSLATIONS FROM
VILLON AND OTHERS
VILLON
PRAYER OF THE OLD WOMAN,
VILLON’S MOTHER
Mother of God that’s Lady of the Heavens, take myself, the poor sinner, the way I’ll be along with them that’s chosen.
Let you say to your own Son that He’d have a right to forgive my share of sins, when it’s the like He’s done, many’s the day, with big and famous sinners. I’m a poor aged woman, was never at school, and is no scholar with letters, but I’ve seen pictures in the chapel with Paradise on one side, and harps and pipes in it, and the place on the other side, where sinners do be boiled in torment; the one gave me great joy, the other a great fright and scaring; let me have the good place, Mother of God, and it’s in your faith I’ll live always.
It’s yourself that bore Jesus, that has no end or death, and He the Lord Almighty, that took our weakness and gave Himself to sorrows, a young and gentle man. It’s Himself is our Lord surely, and it’s in that faith I’ll live always.
VILLON
AN OLD WOMAN’S LAMENTATIONS
The man I had a love for—a great rascal would kick me in the gutter—is dead thirty years and over it, and it is I am left behind, grey and aged. When I do be minding the good days I had, minding what I was one time, and what it is I’m come to, and when I do look on my own self, poor and dry, and pinched together, it wouldn’t be much would set me raging in the streets.
Where is the round forehead I had, and the fine hair, and the two eyebrows, and the eyes with a big gay look out of them would bring folly from a great scholar? Where is my straight, shapely nose, and two ears, and my chin with a valley in it, and my lips were red and open?
Where are the pointed shoulders were on me, and the long arms and nice hands to them? Where is my bosom was as white as any, or my straight rounded sides?
It’s the way I am this day—my forehead is gone away into furrows, the hair of my head is grey and whitish, my eyebrows are tumbled from me, and my two eyes have died out within my head—those eyes that would be laughing to the men—my nose has a hook on it, my ears are hanging down, and my lips are sharp and skinny.
That’s what’s left over from the beauty of a right woman—a bag of bones, and legs the like of two shrivelled sausages going beneath it.
It’s of the like of that we old hags do be thinking, of the good times are gone away from us, and we crouching on our hunkers by a little fire of twigs, soon kindled and soon spent, we that were the pick of many.
COLIN MUSSET, AN OLD POET,
COMPLAINS TO HIS PATRON
From the Old French
I’m getting old in your big house, and you’ve never stretched your hand with a bit of gold to me, or a day’s wages itself. By my faith in Mary, it’s not that way I’ll serve you always, living on my pocket, with a few coppers only, and a small weight in my bag. You’ve had me to this day, singing on your stairs before you, but I’m getting a good mind to be going off, when I see my purse flattened out, and my wife does be making a fool of me from the edge of the door.
It’s another story I hear when I come home at night and herself looks behind me, and sets her eye on my bag stuffed to bursting, and I maybe with a grey, decent coat on my back. It’s that time she’s not long leaving down her spinning and coming with a smile, ready to choke me with her two hands squeezing my neck. It’s then my sons have a great rage to be rubbing the sweat from my horse, and my daughter isn’t long wringing the necks on a pair of chickens, and making a stew in the pot. It’s that day my youngest will bring me a towel, and she with nice manners.... It’s a full purse, I tell you, makes a man lord in his own house.
WALTER VON DER
VOGELWEIDE
I never set my two eyes on a head was so fine as your head, but I’d no way to be looking down into your heart.
It’s for that I was tricked out and out—that was the thanks I got for being so steady in my love.
I tell you, if I could have laid my hands on the whole set of the stars, the moon and the sun along with it, by Christ I’d have given the lot to her. No place have I set eyes on the like of her; she’s bad to her friends, and gay and playful with those she’d have a right to hate. I ask you can that behaviour have a good end come to it?
LEOPARDI
SILVIA
Are you bearing in mind that time when there was a fine look out of your eyes, and yourself, pleased and thoughtful, were going up the boundaries that are set to childhood? That time the quiet rooms, and the lanes about the house, would be noisy with your songs that were never tired out; the time you’d be sitting down with some work that is right for women, and well pleased with the hazy coming times you were looking out at in your own mind.
May was sweet that year, and it was pleasantly you’d pass the day.
Then I’d leave my pleasant studies, and the paper I had smudged with ink where I would be spending the better part of the day, and cock my ears from the sill of my father’s house, till I’d hear the sound of your voice, or of your loom when your hands moved quickly. It’s then I would set store of the quiet sky and the lanes and little places, and the sea was far away in one place and the high hills in another.
There is no tongue will tell till the judgment what I feel in myself those times.