This, we cannot help thinking, is a little hard on the good old times: though the specimens of their poetry, which are subjoined, go far to justify this severity. They certainly indicate neither refinement of sentiment, nor elevation of fancy. They are merely war or love-songs, relating to the personal feelings or situation of the individual who composed them. The Provençal poetry, indeed, is in a great measure lyrical; at least it is certain, that it is neither epic nor dramatic. The tensons were, indeed, a sort of eclogues, or disputes in verse, in which two or three persons maintained their favourite opinions on any given subject; and they appear to have been for the most part extemporaneous effusions. The following example will give some idea of the state of manners and literature at this period.
‘Several ladies who assisted at the Courts of Love, as they were called, used to reply themselves to the verses which their beauty inspired. There is left but a small portion of their compositions, but they have almost always the advantage over the troubadours. Poetry did not then aspire either to creative power, or to sublimity of thought, or to variety of imagery. Those powerful efforts of genius, which have given birth at a later period to dramatic and epic poetry, were then unknown; and in the simple expression of feeling, an inspiration, more tender and more delicate, would give to the poetry of women a more natural expression. One of the most pleasing of these compositions is by Clara d’Anduse: it is left unfinished: but, as far as a prose translation can convey the impression, which depends so much on the harmony of the metre, it is as follows.
‘“In what cruel trouble, in what profound sadness, jealous calumniators have plunged my heart! With what malice these perfidious destroyers of all pleasure have persecuted me! They have forced you to banish yourself from me, you whom I love more than life! They have robbed me of the happiness of seeing you, and of seeing you without ceasing! Ah, I shall die of grief and rage!
‘“But let calumny arm itself against me: the love with which you inspire me braves all its shafts: they will never be able to reach my heart: nothing can increase its tenderness, or give new force to the desires with which it is inflamed. There is no one, though it were my enemy, who would not become dear to me, by speaking well of you: but my best friend would cease to be so, from the moment he dared to reproach you.
‘“No, my sweet friend, no: do not believe that I have a heart treacherous to you: do not fear that I should ever abandon you for another, though I should be solicited by all the ladies of the land. Love, who holds me in his chains, has said, that my heart should be devoted to you alone; and I swear that it shall always be so. Ah, if I was as much mistress of my hand, he who now possesses, should never have obtained it.
‘“Beloved! such is the grief which I feel at being separated from you, such my despair, that when I wish to sing, I only sigh and weep. I cannot finish this couplet. Alas! my songs cannot obtain for my heart what it desires.”’
The poets of this period were almost all of them chevaliers; and it is in their war-songs, that, according to M. Sismondi, we find most of the enthusiasm of poetry. Guillaume de St. Gregory, thus chants his love for war, and seems to be inspired by the very sight of the field of battle.
‘How I love the gay season of the approach of spring, which covers our fields with leaves and flowers! How I love the sweet warbling of the birds, which make the woods resound with their songs! But how much more delightful still it is to see the tents and pavillions pitched in the meadows! How I feel my courage swell, when I see the armed chevaliers on their horses, marching in long array!
‘I love to see the cavaliers put to flight,—the common people, who strive to carry away their most precious effects: I love to see the thick battalions of soldiers, who advance in pursuit of the fugitives; and my joy redoubles when I observe the siege laid to the strongest castles, and hear their battered walls fall with a dreadful crash!’... ‘Yes, I repeat it again, the pleasures of the table, or of love, are not to be compared, in my mind, with those of the furious fight ... when I hear the horses neighing on the green meadows, and the cry repeated on all sides, “To arms, to arms!” when the great and the vulgar load the earth with their bodies, or roll, dying, into the ditches; and when large wounds from the blows of the lance mark the victims of honour.’
This poetic rhapsody of the eleventh or twelfth century is not altogether unworthy of the spirit of the nineteenth; so we shall not stop to moralize upon it. One of the most heroic and magnanimous personages of the same period was Bertrand de Born, Vicompte Hautefort. He was a great maker of war and verses. ‘The most violent,’ says M. Sismondi, ‘the most impetuous of the French chevaliers, breathing nothing but war; exciting, inflaming the passions of his neighbours and his superiors, in order to engage them in hostilities, he troubled the provinces of Guienne by his arms and his intrigues, during all the second half of the twelfth century; and the reigns of the Kings of England, Henry II. and Richard Cœur de Lion. He first stripped his brother Constantine of his personal inheritance, and made war upon Richard who protected him. He then attached himself to Henry, the brother of Richard Cœur de Lion, and afterwards made war upon him, after having engaged him in a conspiracy against his father. For this last offence he is put by Dante into his hell. In all his enterprizes, he encouraged himself by composing sirventes, that is, songs in which he sounded the war-whoop, in the manner of some writers nearer our own times. Let the reader judge for himself.