The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poems and translations

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title : Poems and translations

Author : J. M. Synge

Francesco Petrarca

Release date : March 17, 2024 [eBook #73189]

Language : English

Original publication : Dublin: Maunsel & Company, Ltd

Credits : Carla Foust, Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS ***

POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS

BY JOHN M. SYNGE

MAUNSEL & COMPANY, LTD 96 MIDDLE ABBEY ST. DUBLIN

1911

Cuala Press Edition. 1909. Copyright. John Quinn. 1909
Reprinted with additions (Collected Works of J. M. Synge) 1910
All rights reserved

Printed by Maunsel and Co., Ltd., Dublin

CONTENTS

POEMS

PREFACE p. xi
QUEENS 1
IN KERRY 3
A WISH 4
THE ’MERGENCY MAN 5
DANNY 6
PATCH-SHANEEN 8
ON AN ISLAND 10
BEG-INNISH 11
EPITAPH 12
THE PASSING OF THE SHEE 13
ON AN ANNIVERSARY 14
THE OAKS OF GLENCREE 15
A QUESTION 16
DREAD 17
IN GLENCULLEN 18
I’VE THIRTY MONTHS 19
EPITAPH 20
PRELUDE 21
IN MAY 22
ON A BIRTHDAY 23
WINTER 24
THE CURSE 25


TRANSLATIONS FROM PETRARCH

SONNETS FROM “LAURA IN DEATH”

LAURA BEING DEAD, PETRARCH FINDS
TROUBLE IN ALL THE THINGS OF
THE EARTH 		29
HE ASKS HIS HEART TO RAISE ITSELF
UP TO GOD 		30
HE WISHES HE MIGHT DIE AND FOLLOW
LAURA 		31
LAURA IS EVER PRESENT TO HIM 32
HE CEASES TO SPEAK OF HER GRACES
AND HER VIRTUES WHICH ARE NO
MORE 		33
HE IS JEALOUS OF THE HEAVENS AND
THE EARTH 		34
THE FINE TIME OF THE YEAR INCREASES
PETRARCH’S SORROW 		35
HE UNDERSTANDS THE GREAT CRUELTY
OF DEATH 		36
THE SIGHT OF LAURA’S HOUSE REMINDS
HIM OF THE GREAT HAPPINESS HE
HAS LOST 		37
HE SENDS HIS RHYMES TO THE TOMB
OF LAURA TO PRAY HER TO CALL
HIM TO HER 		38
ONLY HE WHO MOURNS HER, AND
HEAVEN THAT POSSESSES HER, KNEW
HER WHILE SHE LIVED 		39
LAURA WAITS FOR HIM IN HEAVEN 40


TRANSLATIONS FROM VILLON
AND OTHERS

PRAYER OF THE OLD WOMAN, VILLON’S
MOTHER 		43
AN OLD WOMAN’S LAMENTATIONS 44
COLIN MUSSET, AN OLD POET, COMPLAINS
TO HIS PATRON 		46
WALTER VON DER VOGELWEIDE 48
LEOPARDI—SILVIA 49

POEMS

[Pg xi]

PREFACE

I have often thought that at the side of the poetic diction, which everyone condemns, modern verse contains a great deal of poetic material, using poetic in the same special sense. The poetry of exaltation will be always the highest; but when men lose their poetic feeling for ordinary life, and cannot write poetry of ordinary things, their exalted poetry is likely to lose its strength of exaltation, in the way men cease to build beautiful churches when they have lost happiness in building shops.

Many of the older poets, such as Villon and Herrick and Burns, used the whole of their personal life as their material, and the verse written in this way was read by strong men, and thieves, and deacons, not by little cliques only. Then, in the town writing of the eighteenth century, ordinary life was put into verse that was not poetry, and when poetry came back with Coleridge and Shelley, it went into verse that was not always human.

[Pg xii]

In these days poetry is usually a flower of evil or good; but it is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.

Even if we grant that exalted poetry can be kept successful by itself, the strong things of life are needed in poetry also, to show that what is exalted or tender is not made by feeble blood. It may almost be said that before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.

The poems which follow were written at different times during the last sixteen or seventeen years, most of them before the views just stated, with which they have little to do, had come into my head.

The translations are sometimes free, and sometimes almost literal, according as seemed most fitting with the form of language I have used.

J. M. S.

Glenageary , December, 1908 .

[Pg 1]

QUEENS

Seven dog-days we let pass
Naming Queens in Glenmacnass,
All the rare and royal names
Wormy sheepskin yet retains:
Etain, Helen, Maeve, and Fand,
Golden Deirdre’s tender hand;
Bert, the big-foot, sung by Villon,
Cassandra, Ronsard found in Lyon.
Queens of Sheba, Meath, and Connaught,
Coifed with crown, or gaudy bonnet;
Queens whose finger once did stir men,
Queens were eaten of fleas and vermin,
Queens men drew like Monna Lisa,
Or slew with drugs in Rome and Pisa.
We named Lucrezia Crivelli,
And Titian’s lady with amber belly,
Queens acquainted in learned sin,
Jane of Jewry’s slender shin:
Queens who cut the bogs of Glanna,
Judith of Scripture, and Gloriana,
Queens who wasted the East by proxy,
Or drove the ass-cart, a tinker’s doxy.
[Pg 2]
Yet these are rotten—I ask their pardon—
And we’ve the sun on rock and garden;
These are rotten, so you’re the Queen
Of all are living, or have been.

[Pg 3]

IN KERRY

We heard the thrushes by the shore and sea,
And saw the golden stars’ nativity,
Then round we went the lane by Thomas Flynn,
Across the church where bones lie out and in;
And there I asked beneath a lonely cloud
Of strange delight, with one bird singing loud,
What change you’d wrought in graveyard, rock and sea,
This new wild paradise to wake for me....
Yet knew no more than knew those merry sins
Had built this stack of thigh-bones, jaws and shins.

[Pg 4]

A WISH

May seven tears in every week
Touch the hollow of your cheek,
That I—signed with such a dew—
For a lion’s share may sue
Of the roses ever curled
Round the May-pole of the world.
Heavy riddles lie in this,
Sorrow’s sauce for every kiss.

[Pg 5]

THE ’MERGENCY MAN

He was lodging above in Coom,
And he’d the half of the bailiff’s room.
Till a black night came in Coomasaharn
A night of rains you’d swamp a star in.
“To-night,” says he, “with the devil’s weather
The hares itself will quit the heather.
I’ll catch my boys with a latch on the door,
And serve my process on near a score.”
The night was black at the fording place,
And the flood was up in a whitened race,
But devil a bit he’d turn his face.
Then the peelers said, “Now mind your lepping,
How can you see the stones for stepping?
“We’ll wash our hands of your bloody job.”
“Wash and welcome,” says he, “begob.”
He made two leps with a run and dash,
Then the peelers heard a yell and splash;
And the ’mergency man in two days and a bit
Was found in the ebb tide stuck in a net.

[Pg 6]

DANNY

One night a score of Erris men,
A score I’m told and nine,
Said, “We’ll get shut of Danny’s noise
Of girls and widows dyin’.
“There’s not his like from Binghamstown
To Boyle and Ballycroy,
At playing hell on decent girls,
At beating man and boy.
“He’s left two pairs of female twins
Beyond in Killacreest,
And twice in Crossmolina fair
He’s struck the parish priest.
“But we’ll come round him in the night
A mile beyond the Mullet;
Ten will quench his bloody eyes,
And ten will choke his gullet.”
It wasn’t long till Danny came,
From Bangor making way,
And he was damning moon and stars
And whistling grand and gay.
[Pg 7]
Till in a gap of hazel glen—
And not a hare in sight—
Out lepped the nine-and-twenty lads
Along his left and right.
Then Danny smashed the nose on Byrne,
He split the lips on three,
And bit across the right hand thumb
On one Red Shawn Magee.
But seven tripped him up behind,
And seven kicked before,
And seven squeezed around his throat
Till Danny kicked no more.
Then some destroyed him with their heels,
Some tramped him in the mud,
Some stole his purse and timber pipe,
And some washed off his blood.
And when you’re walking out the way
From Bangor to Belmullet,
You’ll see a flat cross on a stone
Where men choked Danny’s gullet.

[Pg 8]

PATCH-SHANEEN

Shaneen and Maurya Prendergast
Lived west in Carnareagh,
And they’d a cur-dog, cabbage plot,
A goat, and cock of hay.
He was five foot one or two,
Herself was four foot ten,
And he went travelling asking meal
Above through Caragh Glen.
She’d pick her bag of carrageen
Or perries through the surf,
Or loan an ass of Foxy Jim
To fetch her creel of turf.
Till on one windy Samhain night,
When there’s stir among the dead,
He found her perished, stiff and stark,
Beside him in the bed.
And now when Shaneen travels far
From Droum to Ballyhyre
The women lay him sacks or straw,
Beside the seed of fire.
[Pg 9]
And when the grey cocks crow and flap,
And winds are in the sky,
“Oh, Maurya, Maurya, are you dead?”
You’ll hear Patch-Shaneen cry.

[Pg 10]

ON AN ISLAND

You’ve plucked a curlew, drawn a hen,
Washed the shirts of seven men,
You’ve stuffed my pillow, stretched the sheet,
And filled the pan to wash your feet,
You’ve cooped the pullets, wound the clock,
And rinsed the young men’s drinking crock;
And now we’ll dance to jigs and reels,
Nailed boots chasing girls’ naked heels,
Until your father’ll start to snore,
And Jude, now you’re married, will stretch on the floor.

[Pg 11]

BEG-INNISH

Bring Kateen-beug and Maurya Jude
To dance in Beg-Innish,
And when the lads (they’re in Dunquin)
Have sold their crabs and fish,
Wave fawny shawls and call them in,
And call the little girls who spin,
And seven weavers from Dunquin,
To dance in Beg-Innish.
I’ll play you jigs, and Maurice Kean,
Where nets are laid to dry,
I’ve silken strings would draw a dance
From girls are lame or shy;
Four strings I’ve brought from Spain and France
To make your long men skip and prance,
Till stars look out to see the dance
Where nets are laid to dry.
We’ll have no priest or peeler in
To dance in Beg-Innish;
But we’ll have drink from M’riarty Jim
Rowed round while gannets fish,
A keg with porter to the brim,
That every lad may have his whim,
Till we up sails with M’riarty Jim
And sail from Beg-Innish.

[Pg 12]

EPITAPH

After reading Ronsard’s lines from Rabelais

If fruits are fed on any beast
Let vine-roots suck this parish priest,
For while he lived, no summer sun
Went up but he’d a bottle done,
And in the starlight beer and stout
Kept his waistcoat bulging out.
Then Death that changes happy things
Damned his soul to water springs.

[Pg 13]

THE PASSING OF THE SHEE

After looking at one of A. E.’s pictures

Adieu, sweet Angus, Maeve, and Fand,
Ye plumed yet skinny Shee,
That poets played with hand in hand
To learn their ecstasy.
We’ll stretch in Red Dan Sally’s ditch,
And drink in Tubber fair,
Or poach with Red Dan Philly’s bitch
The badger and the hare.

[Pg 14]

ON AN ANNIVERSARY

After reading the dates in a book of Lyrics.

With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen
We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green:
Then Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine,
Is Crashaw’s niche, that honey-lipped divine.
And so when all my little work is done
They’ll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one,
And died in Dublin.... What year will they write
For my poor passage to the stall of night?

[Pg 15]

TO THE OAKS OF GLENCREE

My arms are round you, and I lean
Against you, while the lark
Sings over us, and golden lights, and green
Shadows are on your bark.
There’ll come a season when you’ll stretch
Black boards to cover me:
Then in Mount Jerome I will lie, poor wretch,
With worms eternally.

[Pg 16]

A QUESTION

I asked if I got sick and died, would you
With my black funeral go walking too,
If you’d stand close to hear them talk or pray
While I’m let down in that steep bank of clay.
And, No, you said, for if you saw a crew
Of living idiots pressing round that new
Oak coffin—they alive, I dead beneath
That board—you’d rave and rend them with your teeth.

[Pg 17]

DREAD

Beside a chapel I’d a room looked down,
Where all the women from the farms and town,
On Holy-days and Sundays used to pass
To marriages, and christenings, and to Mass.
Then I sat lonely watching score and score,
Till I turned jealous of the Lord next door....
Now by this window, where there’s none can see,
The Lord God’s jealous of yourself and me.

[Pg 18]

IN GLENCULLEN

Thrush, linnet, stare and wren,
Brown lark beside the sun,
Take thought of kestril, sparrow-hawk,
Birdlime and roving gun.
You great-great-grand-children
Of birds I’ve listened to,
I think I robbed your ancestors
When I was young as you.

[Pg 19]

I’VE THIRTY MONTHS

I’ve thirty months, and that’s my pride,
Before my age’s a double score,
Though many lively men have died
At twenty-nine or little more.
I’ve left a long and famous set
Behind some seven years or three,
But there are millions I’d forget
Will have their laugh at passing me.

25, IX , 1908.

[Pg 20]

EPITAPH

A silent sinner, nights and days,
No human heart to him drew nigh,
Alone he wound his wonted ways,
Alone and little loved did die.
And autumn Death for him did choose,
A season dank with mists and rain,
And took him, while the evening dews
Were settling o’er the fields again.

[Pg 21]

PRELUDE

Still south I went and west and south again,
Through Wicklow from the morning till the night,
And far from cities, and the sights of men,
Lived with the sunshine, and the moon’s delight.
I knew the stars, the flowers, and the birds,
The grey and wintry sides of many glens,
And did but half remember human words,
In converse with the mountains, moors, and fens.

[Pg 22]

IN MAY

In a nook
That opened south,
You and I
Lay mouth to mouth.
A snowy gull
And sooty daw
Came and looked
With many a caw;
“Such,” I said,
“Are I and you,
When you’ve kissed me
Black and blue!”

[Pg 23]

ON A BIRTHDAY

Friend of Ronsard, Nashe, and Beaumont,
Lark of Ulster, Meath, and Thomond,
Heard from Smyrna and Sahara
To the surf of Connemara,
Lark of April, June, and May,
Sing loudly this my Lady-day.

[Pg 24]

WINTER

With little money in a great city

There’s snow in every street
Where I go up and down,
And there’s no woman, man, or dog
That knows me in the town.
I know each shop, and all
These Jews, and Russian Poles,
For I go walking night and noon
To spare my sack of coals.

[Pg 25]

THE CURSE.

To a sister of an enemy of the author’s
who disapproved of “The Playboy.”

Lord, confound this surly sister,
Blight her brow with blotch and blister,
Cramp her larynx, lung, and liver,
In her guts a galling give her.
Let her live to earn her dinners
In Mountjoy with seedy sinners:
Lord, this judgment quickly bring,
And I’m your servant, J. M. Synge.

[Pg 26]

[Pg 27]

TRANSLATIONS FROM
PETRARCH

[Pg 28]

[Pg 29]

SONNETS FROM “LAURA IN
DEATH”

LAURA BEING DEAD, PETRARCH
FINDS TROUBLE IN ALL THE
THINGS OF THE EARTH

Life is flying from me, not stopping an hour, and Death is making great strides following my track. The days about me and the days passed over me, are bringing me desolation, and the days to come will be the same surely.

All things that I am bearing in mind, and all things I am in dread of, are keeping me in troubles, in this way one time, in that way another time, so that if I wasn’t taking pity on my own self it’s long ago I’d have given up my life.

If my dark heart has any sweet thing it is turned away from me, and then farther off I see the great winds where I must be sailing. I see my good luck far away in the harbour, but my steersman is tired out, and the masts and the ropes on them are broken, and the beautiful lights where I would be always looking are quenched.

[Pg 30]

HE ASKS HIS HEART TO RAISE ITSELF
UP TO GOD

What is it you’re thinking, lonesome heart? For what is it you’re turning back ever and always to times that are gone away from you? For what is it you’re throwing sticks on the fire where it is your own self that is burning?

The little looks and sweet words you’ve taken one by one and written down among your songs, are gone up into the Heavens, and it’s late, you know well, to go seeking them on the face of the earth.

Let you not be giving new life every day to your own destruction, and following a fool’s thoughts for ever. Let you seek Heaven when there is nothing left pleasing on the earth, and it a poor thing if a great beauty, the like of her, would be destroying your peace and she living or dead.

[Pg 31]

HE WISHES HE MIGHT DIE AND
FOLLOW LAURA

In the years of her age the most beautiful and the most flowery—the time Love has his mastery—Laura, who was my life, has gone away leaving the earth stripped and desolate. She has gone up into the Heavens, living and beautiful and naked, and from that place she is keeping her Lordship and her rein upon me, and I crying out: Ohone, when will I see that day breaking that will be my first day with herself in Paradise?

My thoughts are going after her, and it is that way my soul would follow her, lightly, and airily, and happily, and I would be rid of all my great troubles. But what is delaying me is the proper thing to lose me utterly, to make me a greater weight on my own self.

Oh, what a sweet death I might have died this day three years to-day!

[Pg 32]

LAURA IS EVER PRESENT TO HIM

If the birds are making lamentation, or the green banks are moved by a little wind of summer, or you can hear the waters making a stir by the shores that are green and flowery.

That’s where I do be stretched out thinking of love, writing my songs, and herself that Heaven shows me though hidden in the earth I set my eyes on, and hear the way that she feels my sighs and makes an answer to me.

“Alas,” I hear her say, “why are you using yourself up before the time is come, and pouring out a stream of tears so sad and doleful.

“You’d do right to be glad rather, for in dying I won days that have no ending, and when you saw me shutting up my eyes I was opening them on the light that is eternal.”

[Pg 33]

HE CEASES TO SPEAK OF HER
GRACES AND HER VIRTUES
WHICH ARE NO MORE

The eyes that I would be talking of so warmly, and the arms, and the hands, and the feet, and the face that are after calling me away from myself, and making me a lonesome man among all people.

The hair that was of shining gold, and brightness of the smile that was the like of an angel’s surely, and was making a paradise of the earth, are turned to a little dust that knows nothing at all.

And yet I myself am living; it is for this I am making a complaint to be left without the light I had such a great love for, in good fortune and bad, and this will be the end of my songs of love, for the vein where I had cleverness is dried up, and every thing I have is turned to complaint only.

[Pg 34]

HE IS JEALOUS OF THE HEAVENS
AND THE EARTH

What a grudge I am bearing the earth that has its arms about her, and is holding that face away from me, where I was finding peace from great sadness.

What a grudge I am bearing the Heavens that are after taking her, and shutting her in with greediness, the Heavens that do push their bolt against so many.

What a grudge I am bearing the blessed saints that have got her sweet company, that I am always seeking; and what a grudge I am bearing against Death, that is standing in her two eyes, and will not call me with a word.

[Pg 35]

THE FINE TIME OF THE YEAR
INCREASES PETRARCH’S SORROW

The south wind is coming back, bringing the fine season, and the flowers, and the grass, her sweet family, along with her. The swallow and the nightingale are making a stir, and the spring is turning white and red in every place.

There is a cheerful look on the meadows, and peace in the sky, and the sun is well pleased, I’m thinking, looking downward, and the air and the waters and the earth herself are full of love, and every beast is turning back looking for its mate.

And what is coming to me is great sighing and trouble, which herself is drawing out of my deep heart, herself that has taken the key of it up to Heaven.

And it is this way I am, that the singing birds, and the flowers of the earth, and the sweet ladies, with their grace and comeliness, are the like of a desert to me, and wild beasts astray in it.

[Pg 36]

HE UNDERSTANDS THE GREAT
CRUELTY OF DEATH

My flowery and green age was passing away, and I feeling a chill in the fires had been wasting my heart, for I was drawing near the hillside that is above the grave.

Then my sweet enemy was making a start, little by little, to give over her great wariness, the way she was wringing a sweet thing out of my sharp sorrow. The time was coming when Love and Decency can keep company, and lovers may sit together and say out all things are in their hearts. But Death had his grudge against me, and he got up in the way, like an armed robber, with a pike in his hand.

[Pg 37]

THE SIGHT OF LAURA’S HOUSE
REMINDS HIM OF THE GREAT
HAPPINESS HE HAS LOST

Is this the nest in which my Phœnix put on her feathers of gold and purple, my Phœnix that did hold me under her wing, and she drawing out sweet words and sighs from me? Oh, root of my sweet misery, where is that beautiful face, where light would be shining out, the face that did keep my heart like a flame burning? She was without a match upon the earth, I hear them say, and now she is happy in the Heavens.

And she has left me after her dejected and lonesome, turning back all times to the place I do be making much of for her sake only, and I seeing the night on the little hills where she took her last flight up into the Heavens, and where one time her eyes would make sunshine and it night itself.

[Pg 38]

HE SENDS HIS RHYMES TO THE
TOMB OF LAURA TO PRAY HER
TO CALL HIM TO HER

Let you go down, sorrowful rhymes, to the hard rock is covering my dear treasure, and then let you call out till herself that is in the Heavens will make answer, though her dead body is lying in a shady place.

Let you say to her that it is tired out I am with being alive, with steering in bad seas, but I am going after her step by step, gathering up what she let fall behind her.

It is of her only I do be thinking, and she living and dead, and now I have made her with my songs so that the whole world may know her, and give her the love that is her due.

May it please her to be ready for my own passage that is getting near; may she be there to meet me, herself in the Heavens, that she may call me, and draw me after her.

[Pg 39]

ONLY HE WHO MOURNS HER AND
HEAVEN THAT POSSESSES HER,
KNEW HER WHILE SHE LIVED

Ah, Death, it is you that have left the world cold and shady, with no sun over it. It’s you have left Love without eyes or arms to him, you’ve left liveliness stripped, and beauty without a shape to her, and all courtesy in chains, and honesty thrown down into a hole. I am making lamentation alone, though it isn’t myself only has a cause to be crying out; since you, Death, have crushed the first seed of goodness in the whole world, and with it gone what place will we find a second?

The air and the earth and seas would have a good right to be crying out—and they pitying the race of men that is left without herself, like a meadow without flowers or a ring robbed of jewellery.

The world didn’t know her the time she was in it, but I myself knew her—and I left now to be weeping in this place; and the Heavens knew her, the Heavens that are giving an ear this day to my crying out.

[Pg 40]

LAURA WAITS FOR HIM IN HEAVEN

The first day she passed up and down through the Heavens, gentle and simple were left standing, and they in great wonder, saying one to the other:

“What new light is that? What new beauty at all? The like of herself hasn’t risen up these long years from the common world.”

And herself, well pleased with the Heavens, was going forward, matching herself with the most perfect that were before her, yet one time, and another, waiting a little, and turning her head back to see if myself was coming after her. It’s for that I’m lifting up all my thoughts and will into the Heavens, because I do hear her praying that I should be making haste for ever.

[Pg 41]

TRANSLATIONS FROM
VILLON AND OTHERS

[Pg 42]

[Pg 43]

VILLON

PRAYER OF THE OLD WOMAN,
VILLON’S MOTHER

Mother of God that’s Lady of the Heavens, take myself, the poor sinner, the way I’ll be along with them that’s chosen.

Let you say to your own Son that He’d have a right to forgive my share of sins, when it’s the like He’s done, many’s the day, with big and famous sinners. I’m a poor aged woman, was never at school, and is no scholar with letters, but I’ve seen pictures in the chapel with Paradise on one side, and harps and pipes in it, and the place on the other side, where sinners do be boiled in torment; the one gave me great joy, the other a great fright and scaring; let me have the good place, Mother of God, and it’s in your faith I’ll live always.

It’s yourself that bore Jesus, that has no end or death, and He the Lord Almighty, that took our weakness and gave Himself to sorrows, a young and gentle man. It’s Himself is our Lord surely, and it’s in that faith I’ll live always.

[Pg 44]

VILLON

AN OLD WOMAN’S LAMENTATIONS

The man I had a love for—a great rascal would kick me in the gutter—is dead thirty years and over it, and it is I am left behind, grey and aged. When I do be minding the good days I had, minding what I was one time, and what it is I’m come to, and when I do look on my own self, poor and dry, and pinched together, it wouldn’t be much would set me raging in the streets.

Where is the round forehead I had, and the fine hair, and the two eyebrows, and the eyes with a big gay look out of them would bring folly from a great scholar? Where is my straight, shapely nose, and two ears, and my chin with a valley in it, and my lips were red and open?

Where are the pointed shoulders were on me, and the long arms and nice hands to them? Where is my bosom was as white as any, or my straight rounded sides?

It’s the way I am this day—my forehead is gone away into furrows, the hair of my head is grey and whitish, my eyebrows are [Pg 45] tumbled from me, and my two eyes have died out within my head—those eyes that would be laughing to the men—my nose has a hook on it, my ears are hanging down, and my lips are sharp and skinny.

That’s what’s left over from the beauty of a right woman—a bag of bones, and legs the like of two shrivelled sausages going beneath it.

It’s of the like of that we old hags do be thinking, of the good times are gone away from us, and we crouching on our hunkers by a little fire of twigs, soon kindled and soon spent, we that were the pick of many.

[Pg 46]

COLIN MUSSET, AN OLD POET,
COMPLAINS TO HIS PATRON

From the Old French

I’m getting old in your big house, and you’ve never stretched your hand with a bit of gold to me, or a day’s wages itself. By my faith in Mary, it’s not that way I’ll serve you always, living on my pocket, with a few coppers only, and a small weight in my bag. You’ve had me to this day, singing on your stairs before you, but I’m getting a good mind to be going off, when I see my purse flattened out, and my wife does be making a fool of me from the edge of the door.

It’s another story I hear when I come home at night and herself looks behind me, and sets her eye on my bag stuffed to bursting, and I maybe with a grey, decent coat on my back. It’s that time she’s not long leaving down her spinning and coming with a smile, ready to choke me with her two hands squeezing my neck. It’s then my sons have a great rage to be rubbing the sweat from my horse, and my daughter isn’t long [Pg 47] wringing the necks on a pair of chickens, and making a stew in the pot. It’s that day my youngest will bring me a towel, and she with nice manners.... It’s a full purse, I tell you, makes a man lord in his own house.

[Pg 48]

WALTER VON DER
VOGELWEIDE

I never set my two eyes on a head was so fine as your head, but I’d no way to be looking down into your heart.

It’s for that I was tricked out and out—that was the thanks I got for being so steady in my love.

I tell you, if I could have laid my hands on the whole set of the stars, the moon and the sun along with it, by Christ I’d have given the lot to her. No place have I set eyes on the like of her; she’s bad to her friends, and gay and playful with those she’d have a right to hate. I ask you can that behaviour have a good end come to it?

[Pg 49]

LEOPARDI

SILVIA

Are you bearing in mind that time when there was a fine look out of your eyes, and yourself, pleased and thoughtful, were going up the boundaries that are set to childhood? That time the quiet rooms, and the lanes about the house, would be noisy with your songs that were never tired out; the time you’d be sitting down with some work that is right for women, and well pleased with the hazy coming times you were looking out at in your own mind.

May was sweet that year, and it was pleasantly you’d pass the day.

Then I’d leave my pleasant studies, and the paper I had smudged with ink where I would be spending the better part of the day, and cock my ears from the sill of my father’s house, till I’d hear the sound of your voice, or of your loom when your hands moved quickly. It’s then I would set store of the quiet sky and the lanes and little [Pg 50] places, and the sea was far away in one place and the high hills in another.

There is no tongue will tell till the judgment what I feel in myself those times.

Transcriber’s note

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.