The song I make is of no thing, Of no one, nor myself, I sing, Of joyous youth, nor love-longing, Nor place, nor time; I rode on horseback, slumbering: There sprang this rhyme!
Two hundred years after, it is found in England—
Her eye hath wounded me, y-wisse, Her bende browen that bringeth blisse; Her comely mouth that mightè kisse In mirth he were; I woldè chaungè mine for his That is her fere!
The romance stanza is used also in its original lyrical way, with a refrain added—
For her love I cark and care For her love I droop and dare For her love my bliss is bare And all I waxè wan; For her love in sleep I slake, For her love all night I wake For her love mourning I make More than any man. _Blow, northern wind!_ _Send thou me my sweeting!_ _Blow, northern wind!_ _Blow! blow! blow!_
Technically, it is to be noted that some of those poems have the combination of a six-line with a four-line passage which is frequent in French lyrics of all ages, which is also found in the verse of _The Cherrie and the Slae_ (another of Burns’s favourite measures), and also in some of Gray’s simpler odes. It is found in one of the religious poems, with the six lines first, and the four lines after, as in Burns. The common French pattern arranges them the other way round, and so does Gray, but the constituent parts are the same.
Now shrinketh rose and lily flower That whilom bare that sweete savour, In summer, that sweete tide; Ne is no queene so stark ne stour, Ne no lady so bright in bower That death ne shall by glide; Whoso will flesh-lust forgon, And heaven bliss abide, On Jesu be his thought anon, That thirled was his side.
This poem is a good text to prove the long ancestry of modern verse, and the community of the nations, often very remote from definite intercourse between them. And there is one phrase in this stanza which goes back to the older world: ‘bright in bower’ is from the ancient heroic verse; it may be found in Icelandic, in the Elder Edda.
The fifteenth century, which is so dismal in the works of the more ambitious poets (Lydgate, and Occleve, e.g.), is rich in popular carols which by this time have drawn close to the modern meaning of the name. They are Christmas carols, and the name loses its old general application to any song that went with dancing in a round. In the carols, the art is generally much more simple than in the lyrics which have just been quoted; they belong more truly to the common people, and their authors are less careful. Yet the difference is one of degree. The only difference which is really certain is between one poem and another.