And ten years after, or twenty, as you will,
Arnaut and Richard lodge beneath Chalus:
The dull round towers encroaching on the field,
The tents tight drawn, horses at tether
Further and out of reach, the purple night,
The crackling of small fires, the bannerets,
The lazy leopards on the largest banner,
Stray gleams on hanging mail, an armourer’s torch-flare
Melting on steel.
And in the quietest space
They probe old scandals, say de Born is dead;
And we’ve the gossip (skipped six hundred years).
Richard shall die to-morrow—leave him there
Talking of trobar clus with Daniel.
And the “best craftsman” sings out his friend’s song,
Envies its vigour ... and deplores the technique,
Dispraises his own skill?—That’s as you will.
And they discuss the dead man,
Plantagenet puts the riddle: “Did he love her?”
And Arnaut parries: “Did he love your sister?
True, he has praised her, but in some opinion
He wrote that praise only to show he had
The favour of your party, had been well received.”
“You knew the man.”
“You knew the man.”
“I am an artist, you have tried both métiers.”
“You were born near him.”
“Do we know our friends?”
“Say that he saw the castles, say that he loved Maent!”
“Say that he loved her, does it solve the riddle?”
End the discussion, Richard goes out next day
And gets a quarrel-bolt shot through his vizard,
Pardons the bowman, dies,
Ends our discussion. Arnaut ends
“In sacred odour”—(that’s apocryphal!)
And we can leave the talk till Dante writes:
Surely I saw, and still before my eyes
Goes on that headless trunk, that bears for light
Its own head swinging, gripped by the dead hair,
And like a swinging lamp that says, “Ah me!
I severed men, my head and heart
Ye see here severed, my life’s counterpart.”
Or take En Bertrans?
III
Ed eran due in uno, ed uno in due.
Inferno, XXVIII, 125.
“Bewildering spring, and by the Auvezere
Poppies and day’s-eyes in the green émail
Rose over us; and we knew all that stream,
And our two horses had traced out the valleys;
Knew the low flooded lands squared out with poplars,
In the young days when the deep sky befriended.
And great wings beat above us in the twilight,
And the great wheels in heaven
Bore us together ... surging ... and apart ...
Believing we should meet with lips and hands.
High, high and sure ... and then the counter-thrust:
‘Why do you love me? Will you always love me?
But I am like the grass, I can not love you.’
Or, ‘Love, and I love and love you,
And hate your mind, not you, your soul, your hands.’
So to this last estrangement, Tairiran!