Her eyes have wounded me, i-wis.
Her arching brows that bring the bliss;
Her comely mouth whoso might kiss,
In mirth he were;
And I would change all mine for his
That is her fere.[25]
Her fere, so worthy might I be,
Her fere, so noble, stout and free,
For this one thing I would give three,
Nor haggle aught.
From hell to heaven, if one could see,
So fine is naught,
[Nor half so free;[26]
All lovers true, now listen unto me.]
Now hearken to me while I tell,
In such a fume I boil and well;
There is no fire so hot in hell
As his, I trow,
Who loves unknown and dares not tell
His hidden woe.
I will her well, she wills me woe;
I am her friend, and she my foe;
Methinks my heart will break in two
For sorrow's might;
In God's own greeting may she go,
That maiden white!
I would I were a throstlecock,
A bunting, or a laverock,[27]
Sweet maid!
Between her kirtle and her smock
I'd then be hid!
The reader will easily note the struggle between our poet's conventional and quite literary despair and the fresh communal tone in such passages as we have ventured, despite Leigh Hunt's direful example, to put in italics. This poet was a clerk, or perhaps not even that,—a gleeman; and he dwells, after the manner of his kind, upon a despair which springs from difference of station. But it is England, not France; it is a maiden, not countess or queen, whom he loves; and the tone of his verse is sound and communal at heart. True, the metre, afterwards a favorite with Burns, is one used by the oldest known troubadour of Provence, Count William, as well as by the poets of miracle plays and of such romances as the English 'Octavian'; but like Count William himself, who built on a popular basis, our clerk or gleeman is nearer to the people than to the schools. Indeed, Uhland reminds us that Breton kloer ("clerks") to this day play a leading part as lovers and singers of love in folk-song; and the English clerks in question were not regular priests, consecrated and in responsible positions, but students or unattached followers of theology. They sang with the people; they felt and suffered with the people—as in the case of a far nobler member of the guild, William Langland; and hence sundry political poems which deal with wrongs and suffering endured by the commons of that day. In the struggle of barons and people against Henry III., indignation made verses; and these, too, we owe to the clerks. Such a burst of indignation is the song against Richard of Cornwall, with a turbulent refrain which sounds like a direct loan from the people. One stanza, with this refrain, will suffice. It opens with the traditional "lithe and listen" of the ballad-singer:—
Sit all now still and list to me:
The German King, by my loyalty!
Thirty thousand pound asked he
To make a peace in this country,—
And so he did and more!
Refrain
Richard, though thou be ever trichard,[28]
Trichen[29] shalt thou nevermore!
This, however, like many a scrap of battle-song, ribaldry exchanged between two armies, and the like, has interest rather for the antiquarian than for the reader. We shall leave such fragments, and turn in conclusion to the folk-song of later times.