Christine, I think, may fairly be catalogued among the same sainted sisterhood.
These traditions and legends of an earlier and more credulous age may be likened to the eggs, beautifully spotted and fantastically marked, which some delighted school-boy finds in spring-time, after hours of climbing and nest-hunting. Such eggs, curious in themselves, and brooded over by genius, often break forth into winged and musical poems, which afterward soar high above the nests and the tree-tops in which they were first cradled. Such is the case with the one now under consideration. In a new world, in a land which was not then even dreamed to be in existence, it arises lark-like, soaring and singing toward "heaven's gate." Let us watch it for a few moments, reader, and listen to its matin melody; my word for it, we shall be none the worse, either in heart or head, for having done so.
I shall not mar the beauties of this radiant little poem by attempting a cold and prosaic outline; this would, indeed, be to offer a dingy silhouette in place of a picture glowing with all the colors of a Tintoretto. Instead of this, I say, let the volume speak for itself; procure it, read it aloud to your friend; there is music sleeping in the book, awaken it to the sound of your own voice, and even though you may be a Protestant of the strictest school, you will find here nothing to offend, nothing to call forth a word of disapprobation, with one proviso, however, and that is that you read it as the title-page directs. Remember always that it is supposed to be "A song by a Troubadour."
A troubadour? And what was a troubadour? And what were his mainsprings of action? Hear an answer in the language of one of the most gifted of their number.
"A Dien mon ame, ma vie au roi,
Mon coeur aux dames, l'honneur pour moi!"
This, interpreted into tamer and more prosaic language, means that his ruling principles of action were religion, loyalty, gallantry, and honor; in other words, his soul, his life, his heart belonged respectively to God, to the king, to the ladies, and only his honor he reserved to himself. Such was his creed, such was the disinterested and noble spirit which animated him, and which breathed through all his lays, his vire-lays, his morning songs, his serenades, his sonnets, his idyls, his villanercas, his madrigals, and his canzonets. In this spirit acted the enthusiastic Rudel, who became enamored of the Countess of Tripoli from the reports which he heard of the hospitable manner in which she treated the Crusaders, and who, without having ever seen her, actually started of on a long voyage to visit the object of his admiration. Who has not heard of Blondel, and of the romantic incident by which he discovered the lion-hearted Richard while imprisoned in the castle of Lovenstein?
But in addition to the above-mentioned motive principles, the troubadour was influenced by another sentiment, which had a powerful effect on all the feelings and actions of his life. This was an intense and romantic veneration for the Virgin Mary. In fact, with little variation the following words, which we find in another poem in the same volume, entitled "Raphael Sanzio," might with equal propriety be attributed to one of the troubadours.
—"Her whose colors I have worn since first
I dreamed of beauty in the chestnut shades
Of Umbria—Her for whom my best of life
Has been one labor—Her, the Nazareth maid,
Who gave to heaven a queen, to man a God,
To God a mother."
Such, then, was the troubadour. His birthplace was Provence. It was there, in fact, that during the darkness of the Middle Ages the muse relit her torch which had long been extinguished. Many years before Dante's great poem rose like a sun—never again to set—the troubadours, those morning-stars of poesy, "sang together and shouted for joy." The troubadour preceded the Saxon bard, the Anglo-Norman minstrel, and the German minnesinger. There were held those curious courts of love where [{683}] queens and noble ladies often presided, and there were exhibited, on green and flowery meadows, those poetical contests, those festive jousts and tournaments, the idea of which seems to have been caught from the neighboring Saracens of Spain. The cross and the crescent both added something to the great result, the one contributing the deep and earnest glow of devotion, the other the pomp and circumstance of chivalry.
Of all these circumstances our poet has, with exquisite tact and skill, availed himself. Christine herself, when only ten years old, had accompanied her father to the Holy Land. This throws an oriental richness around her whole bearing and manner of thinking: