Still there are beautiful lines in Arnaut, lines of
complete clarity and simplicity.

There are lines and not so few in A. like
nothing else I have found in other troubadours. But I
have not yet read all the poems of STESSIER the troubadours
I think
(nor has anyone else now living) unless it be Dr Levy.

I think however it will be difficult for them
to find Arnaut's match, NOT in mere tornate de forza,
but in a steady attack and analysis of the basic problems
of the art of sung poetry.

The whole problem of keeping
alive, of keeping interesting an art that was falling,
or had fallen into stereotype and monotony.

Did he keep it alive. For how long
or two or three decades ?

Note that Dante does not solve the problem.
The Commedia does not solve the problem. The Italian
philosophic Canzoni did not solve the problem.

The solution came with the ballade,
in a way, and with Chas. Dorleans in a way, and
with the Elizabethans in a way.

By a cutting down of the
form. It was a beautiful fading. And Campion was the
last chapter.

The nineties did not do Swinburne what he did

WARNING

The mss. of these versions, sent toward America some months
ago was, in the language of the post office, "such a lost through enemy action", coming again upon
my earlier drafts my first feeling is one of acute distress.
Were I to print only these english translations as can
give pleasure on first reading to anyone of any literary
sense whatsoever, I should not print over two or three.
The phrasing in places is appalling, clumsy, wooden,
unbearable. Living among enemies and in a time where
every serious attempt to heighten aesthetic susceptibilities
is exposed to open and unashamed hatred, I am even more
rash than usual in permitting the imprint of this booklet.
It is not to be supposed that I in six months or six
years can recreate in English a technique which took two
centuries and two hundred troubadours to establish. Still
there is an aesthetic of rhyme more developed and developable
than might be discovered from English metric; there is
even a pleasure to ear in coming on a fine fifth rhyme
where the preparation has been made in four preceding
words void of any signal felicity.

The stuff can be of no interest whatsoever, save to
and
the serious lyrist to a serious metrician. Petrarch
when he thought of a single good line, used it to start off
a sonnet; the next generation, wearied with this
obvious weakness used to write the good line at the end,

She'd ne'er destroy
-- her man with cruelty
Twixt here 'n' Savoy
there feeds no fairer she,
Than pleaseth me
-- till Paris had ne'er joy
In such degree
from Helena of Troy.

7.
She's so the rarest
who holdeth me thus gay,
The thirty fairest
can not contest her sway
'Tis right par fay
thou know, O song that wearest
Such bright array,
whose quality thou sharest.

8.
Chançon, nor stay
-- till to her thou declarest :
Arnaut would say
me not, wert thou not fairest.

" Can chai la fueilla " is interesting for its rhythm,
for the sea-chantey swing produced by simple device of £2
caesurae :

Can chai la fueilla
dels ausors entrecims ,
El freitz s'ergueilla
don sechal vais' el vims,
Dels dous refrims
vei sordezir la brueilla ;
Mas ieu soi prims
d'amor , qui que s'en tueilla .

The poem does not keep the same rhyme throughout, and
the only reason for giving the whole of it in my
English dither is that one can _not_ get the effect of
the thumping and iterate foot-beat from one or two strophes.

## LANCAN SON PASSAT LI GIURE

When the frosts are gone and over,
And are stripped from hill and hollow,
When in close the blossom blinketh
From the spray where the fruit cometh,
The flower and song and the clarion
Of the season sweet and merry
Bid me with high joy to bear me
Through days while April's coming on.

Though joy's right hard to discover,
Such sly ways doth false love follow,
Only sure he never drinketh
At the fount where true faith hometh;
A thousand girls, but two or one
Of her falsehoods over chary,
Stabbing whom vows make unwary
Their tenderness is vilely done.

The most wise runs drunkest lover,
Sans pint-pot or wine to swallow,
If a whim her locks unlinketh,
One stray hair his noose becometh.
When evasion's fairest shown
Then the sly puss purrs most near ye.
Innocents at heart be ware ye,
When she seems colder than a nun.

See, I thought so highly of her :
Trusted, but the game is hollow.
Not one won piece soundly clinketh;
All the cardinals that Rome hath,
Yea they all were put upon.
Her device is " Slyly Wary ".
Cunning are the snares they carry,
Yet while they watched they'd be undone.

Whom Love makes so mad a rover,
'Ll take a cuckoo for a swallow,
If she say so, sooth he thinketh
There's a plain where Puy-de-Dome is.
Till his eyes and nails are gone,
He'll --throw dice and follow fairly
--Sure as old tales never vary --
For his fond heart he is foredone.

Lancan son passat" shows the simple and presumably early
style of Arnaut, with the kind of reversal from more
or less trochaic to more or less iambic movement in
fifth and eighth lines, a _kind_ of rhythm taken over by
Elizabethan lyricists. Terms trochaic and iambic are
however utterly inaccurate when applied to syllabic metres
set to a particular melody:

Lancan son passat li giure
E noi reman pucis ni comba,
Et el verdier la flors trembla
Sus el entrecim on poma,
La flors e li chan 'eil clar quill
Ab la sazon doussa e coigna
M'enseignon c'ab joi m³apoigna,
Sai al temps de l'intran d'April.