merits, for a poem that is sung should not be too expressive. Here is an example:
“Au departir de vous mon cuer vous lais
Et je m’en vois dolans et esplourés.
Pour vous servir, sans retraire jamais,
Au departir de vous mon cuer vous lais.
Et par m’ame, je n’arai bien ne pais,
Jusqu’au retour, einsi desconfortés.
Au departir de vous mon cuer vous lais
Et je m’en vois dolans et esplourés.”[1]
In Eustache Deschamps we no longer find composer and poet united. Hence his ballads are much more vivid and highly coloured than Machaut’s, therefore often more interesting and yet of an inferior poetical style.
The roundel, because of its very structure, preserved the airy and fluent character of a song to be set to music, even after poets ceased to be composers.
“M’aimerez-vous bien,
Dictes, par vostre ame?
Mais que je vous ame
Plus que nulle rien,
M’aimerez-vous bien?
Dieu mit tant de bien
En vous, que c’est basme
Pour ce je me clame
Vostre. Mais combien
M’aimerez-vous bien?”[2]
These lines are by Jean Meschinot. The simple and pure talent of Christine de Pisan lends itself admirably to these fugitive effects. She versified with the facility characteristic of the epoch, without much variety of form or thought, in a subdued tone and with a slight touch of melancholy. Her poems remind us of those ivory tablets of the fourteenth century, which always represent the same motifs: a hunting scene, episodes of the Roman de la Rose or of Tristram and
- ↑ On parting from you I leave you my heart And I go away lamenting and weeping. To serve you without ever retracting. And by my soul, I shall indeed have no peace Till my return, being thus discomforted.
- ↑ Do you love me indeed? Tell me, by your soul. If I love you More than anything, Will you love me indeed? God put so much goodness In you that it is balm; Therefore I proclaim myself Yours. But how much Will you love me?
