third
The second poem in Canello's edition is perhaps the
of perhaps the greatest metric interest, the vigorous
syncopation, obtained by the very simple means of
breaking his eleven syllable line first into 5 and 6,
then changing at the third line to 4 and 7 gives
a dance swing, a foot-beat of such energy that one is carried
clean through the not very interesting subject matter
of the Provençal, carried almost through the wholly
dull phrasing of my English. It is, as a metre a
victory not of sound over sense, but of simple drum
thud over sense. As the effect is cumulative it can not
be conveyed to the reader who will not read the original
text, save by the lugubrious expedient of putting down
the whole of the dundering counterfeit.

The interest in the next poem centres in the short
lines which guide one to the probably e music to mimic
the bird note, and in the turn of the rhythm thereafter.

This poem is mentioned De Vulgari Eloquio II, 6.

among the models of most excellent construction : " Hunc
gradum excellentissimum nominamus, et hic est quem quaerimus
cum suprema venemur, ut dictum est. Hoc solum illustres can-
tiones inveniuntur contextae. Then follows list of ten poems

One by Bornelh, one by the King of Navarre, one by
Folquet Marseille, this poem of Arnauts, one by Americ
of Bellenoi, Americ of Pegulan, Guinizello, Cavalcanti's
" Poi che di doglia cuon convien ch'io porto ", Cino's
" Avegna ch'io non aggia " and his own " Anor, che nella
mente mi regiona. ".

In II, 10, he write of the _oda continua_ or strophe without
a division, he cites his own " Al poco giorno " as
an example, and says that Daniel uses this manner of
stanza in almost all his canzoni. Dante's poem is a
sestina, it must not be supposed that he means that
_assenza apposizione_ Arnaut wrote sestine most of the time,
Dante is distinguishing simply between strophes with, and
strophes without dieresis.

The next few pages are the relique of a long years'
work on Arnaut Daniel, done at a time when I was more
concerned with polyphonic rhyme and the accord of words
with such instrumental music than I am likely to be emer
again. Nor are these matters technical to be much
discussed until in the revolution of time there shall
arise another guarded society given to hearing poems
sung and to judging such matters acutely. I made what
follows to be a sort of word guide and interlinear or
interpaginal crib and explanation of Arnaut's poems. And
then the original ms. with the extant music of Arnaut
was involved in the tragia failure of Swift & Co. and
then taken off to a strange land with promises which were
never kept. I had done the complete poems of Arnaut into
English, but now they are either too much or too
little and I shall give but the few which may interest
or please a dozen stray people irrespective of the
original beauties of Arnaut. It may be I shall
someday do fat prose work on " Arnaut Daniel and his
time " with more comment and explanation than poems,
but for the present it is out of harmony with my
ambition. The study of polyphonic rhyme has had much
to do with my almost forswearing rhyme altogether. At
no time have men rhymed so well as in Provence or
thought more of rhyming. However this is no place for
a treatise and I leave all the problems of " relations
of word to tune, etc. etc. and likewise of rhymes in

arrangement has been made until or unless the
restive and unprofitable baccillus of scholarship shall
later attack me. The Canzoni of Arnaut lose more
perhaps than those of other troubadours, in translation,
in so far as they are of finer workmanship in themselves
here given
, as for example the one poem of De Borns is more
effective than all those of Arnaut's. The translators
work is of one skill, his authors of many different
degrees of workmanship and felicity. Laura amara
is ill-given by any arrangement of different rhyme
sounds set in the same order. etc. etc. The
rhyming of not one or two sounds, but of a dozen
sounds at a time, is obviously a performance of music
beyond most men to do well. A years work in a language
where this form is unused, can not match with a life's
work in a tongue that had spent the combined work
of over a century solving these problems of music and
accord. Still it were ill that the very existence of
such a form of music should be wholly forgotten, or
even that its particular mechanism should be forgotten
along with its excellence. I give here, of course,
merely the mechanism.