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ENVOI

Vous portastes, digne vierge, princesse,
Jesus regnant, qui n’a ne fin ne cesse.
Le Tout Puissant, prenant notre foiblesse,
Laissa les cieulx et nous vint secourir,
Offrit a mort sa tres chiere jeunesse.
Nostre Seigneur tel est, tel le confesse,
En ceste foy je veuil vivre et mourir.

THE DEAD LORDS.

As I have not wished to mix up smaller things with greater I have put this ballade separate from that of “the Ladies,” though it directly follows it as an after-thought in Villon’s own book. For the former is one of the masterpieces of the world, and this, though very Villon, is not great.

What it has got is the full latter mediaeval love of odd names and reminiscences, and also to the full, the humour of the scholarly tavern, which was the “Mermaid” of that generation: as the startling regret of:

Helas! et le bon roy d’Espaigne
Duquel je ne scay pas le nom….

and the addition, after the false exit of “je me desiste”.

Encore fais une question

He laughed well over it, and was perhaps not thirsty when it was written.

THE DEAD LORDS.

Qui plus? Ou est le Tiers Calixte
Dernier decede de ce nom,
Qui quatre ans tint le papaliste?
Alphonce, le roy d’Arragon,
Le Gracieux Duc de Bourbon,
Et Artus, le Duc de Bretaigne,
Et Charles Septiesme, le Bon?….
Mais ou est le preux Charlemaigne!

Semblablement le roy Scotiste
Qui demy face ot, ce dit on,
Vermeille comme une amatiste
Depuis le front jusqu’au menton?
Le roy de Chippre, de renom?
Helas! et le bon roy d’Espaigne
Duquel je ne scay pas le nom?…
Mais ou est le preux Charlemaigne!

D’en plus parler je me desiste
Le monde n’est qu’abusion.
Il n’est qui contre mort resiste
Le que treuve provision.
Encor fais une question:
Lancelot, le roy de Behaigne,
Ou est il? Ou est son tayon?….
Mais ou est le preux Charlemaigne!

ENVOI.

Ou est Claguin, le bon Breton?
Ou le conte daulphin d’Auvergne
Et le bon feu Duc d’Alencon?…
Mais ou est le preux Charlemaigne!

THE DIRGE.

This is the best ending for any set of verses one may choose out of Villon. It follows and completes the epitaph which in his will he orders to be written in charcoal–or scratched–above his tomb: the sad, sardonic octave of “the little scholar and poor.” It is a kind of added dirge to be read by those who pass and to be hummed or chaunted over him dead. But it is a rondeau.

See how sharp it is with the salt and vinegar of his pressed courageous smile–and how he cannot run away from his religion or from his power over sudden and vivid beauty.

“Sire–et clarte perpetuelle”–which last are the best two words that ever stood in the vulgar for lux perpetua.

It is no wonder that as time went on, more and more people learnt these things by heart.

RONDEAU.

Repos eternel, donne a cil,
Sire, et clarte perpetuelle,
Qui vaillant plat ni escuelle
N’eut oncques, n’ung brain de percil.
Il fut rez, chief, barbe et sourcil,
Comme un navet qu’on ret ou pelle.
Repos eternel donne a cil.
Rigueur le transmit en exil
Et luy frappa au cul la pelle,
Non obstant qu’il dit “J’en appelle!”
Qui n’est pas terme trop subtil.
Repos eternel donne a cil.

——-
NOTES:

THE DEAD LADIES.
Stanza 1, line 1. Note the redundant negative; it is characteristic of mediaeval French, as of all primitive work, that the general suggestion of doubt is sufficient to justify a redundant negative.

Line 2. Flora, etc. It is worth while knowing who these women were. Flora is Juvenal’s Flora (Sat. II. 9), a legend in the university. Of Archipiada I know nothing. Thais was certainly the Egyptian courtesan turned anchoress and canonized, famous in the middle ages and revived to-day in the repulsive masterpiece of M. Anatole France. Elois is, of course, Heloise, and Esbaillart is Abelard. The queen, who in the legend had Buridan (and many others) drowned, was the Dowager of Burgundy that lived in the Tour de Nesle, where the Palais Mazarin is now, and had half the university for a lover: in sober history she founded that college of Burgundy from which the Ecole de Medecine is descended; the legend about her is first heard of (save in this poem) in 1471, from the pen of a German in Leipzig. Blanche may be Blanche of Castille, but more likely she was a vision of Villon’s own, for what did St. Louis’ mother ever sing? Berte is the legendary mother of Charlemagne in the Epics; Beatris is any Beatrice you choose, for they have all died. Allis may just possibly be one of the Troubadour heroines, more likely she is here introduced for rhyme and metre; Haremburgis is strictly historical: she was the Heiress of Maine who married Foulque of Anjou in 1110 and died in 1126: an ancestress, therefore, of the Plantagenets. Jehanne is, of course, Joan of Arc.