No. 39.
False the tongue and foul with slander,
Poisonous treacherous tongue of pander,
Tongue the hangman's knife should sever,
Tongue in flames to burn for ever;
Which hath called me a deceiver,
Faithless lover, quick to leave her,
Whom I love, and leave her slighted,
For another, unrequited!
Hear, ye Muses nine! nay, rather,
Jove, of gods and men the father!
Who for Danae and Europa
Changed thy shape, thou bold eloper!
Hear me, god! ye gods all, hear me!
Such a sin came never near me.
Hear, thou god! and gods all, hear ye!
Thus I sinned not, as I fear ye.
I by Mars vow, by Apollo,
Both of whom Love's learning follow;
Yea, by Cupid too, the terror
Of whose bow forbids all error!
By thy bow I vow and quiver,
By the shafts thou dost deliver,
Without fraud, in honour duly
To observe my troth-plight truly.
I will keep the troth I plighted,
And the reason shall be cited:
'Tis that 'mid the girls no maiden
Ever met I more love-laden.
'Mid the girls thou art beholden
Like a pearl in setting golden;
Yea, thy shoulder, neck, and bosom
Bear of beauty's self the blossom.
Oh, her throat, lips, forehead, nourish
Love, with food that makes him flourish!
And her curls, I did adore them—
They were blonde with heaven's light o'er them.
Therefore, till, for Nature's scorning,
Toil is rest and midnight morning,
Till no trees in woods are growing,
Till fire turns to water flowing;
Till seas have no ships to sail them,
Till the Parthians' arrows fail them,
I, my girl, will love thee ever,
Unbetrayed, betray thee never!
In the following poem a lover bids adieu for ever to an unworthy woman, who has betrayed him. This is a remarkable specimen of the songs written for a complicated melody. The first eight lines seem set to one tune; in the next four that tune is slightly accelerated, and a double rhyme is substituted for a single one in the tenth and twelfth verses. The five concluding lines go to a different kind of melody, and express in each stanza a changed mood of feeling.
I have tried in this instance to adopt the plaster-cast method of translation, as described above,[32] and have even endeavoured to obtain the dragging effect of the first eight lines of each strophe, which are composed neither of exact accentual dactyls nor yet of exact accentual anapaests, but offer a good example of that laxity of rhythm permitted in this prosody for music.
Comparison with the original will show that I was not copying Byron's When we Two Parted; yet the resemblance between that song and the tone which my translation has naturally assumed from the Latin, is certainly noticeable. That Byron could have seen the piece before he wrote his own lines in question is almost impossible, for this portion of the Carmina Burana had not, so far as I am aware, been edited before the year 1847. The coincidence of metrical form, so far as it extends, only establishes the spontaneity of emotion which, in the case of the medieval and the modern poet, found a similar rhythm for the utterance of similar feeling.