To speke ne mightè he forgo And said the queen before: ‘I have loved a fairer woman Than thou ever laidest thine eye upon, This seven year and more!’
The drama of _Lohengrin_ keeps this idea before the public (not to speak of the opera of _Orfeo_), and _Lohengrin_ is a medieval German romance. The Breton lay of Orpheus would not have been in any way exceptional if it had kept to the original fable; the beauty of it loses nothing by the course which it has preferred to take, the happy ending. One may refer to it as a standard, to show what can be done in the medieval art of narrative, with the simplest elements and smallest amount of decoration. It is minstrel poetry, popular poetry—the point is clear when King Orfeo excuses himself to the King of Faerie by the rules of his profession as a minstrel; that was intended to produce a smile, and applause perhaps, among the audience. But though a minstrel’s poem it is far from rude, and it is quite free from the ordinary faults of rambling and prosing, such as Chaucer ridiculed in his _Geste of Sir Thopas_. It is all in good compass, and coherent; nothing in it is meaningless or ill-placed.
_Sir Tristrem_ is a great contrast to _Sir Orfeo_; not an absolute contrast, for neither is this story rambling or out of compass. The difference between the two is that _Sir Orfeo_ is nearly perfect as an English representative of the ‘Breton lay’—i.e. the short French romantic story like the _Lais_ of Marie de France; while _Sir Tristrem_ represents no French style of narrative poetry, and is not very successful (though technically very interesting) as an original English experiment in poetical form. It is distinctly clever, as it is likewise ambitious. The poet intends to do finer things than the common. He adopts a peculiar stanza, not one of the easiest—a stanza more fitted for lyric than narrative poetry, and which is actually used for lyrical verse by the poet Laurence Minot. It is in short lines, well managed and effective in their way, but it is a thin tinkling music to accompany the tragic story.
Ysonde bright of hewe Is far out in the sea; A wind again them blew That sail no might there be; So rew the knightes trewe, Tristrem, so rew he, Ever as they came newe He one again them three Great swink— Sweet Ysonde the free Asked Brengwain a drink.