"And he soothes Pasiphae in her passion for the snow-white bull : happy woman if herds had never been ! Ah, ill-fated maid, what madness seized thee? The daughters of Proetus with imaginary lowings filled the fields ; yet none of them pursued such vile embraces of a beast, however they might dread the plough about their necks, and often feel for horns on their smooth foreheads. Ah, ill-fated maid, thou now art roaming on the mountains He, resting his snowy side on the soft hyacinth, ruminates the blanched herbs under some gloomy oak, or courts some female in the numerous herd."
"Within the gentle heart Love shelters him,
As birds within the green shade of the grove.
Before the gentle heart, in Nature's scheme;
Love was not, nor the gentle heart ere Love
For with the sun, at once,
So sprang the light immediately ; nor was
Its birth before the sun's.
And Love hath his effect in gentleness;
Of very self : even as
Within the middle fire the heat's excess.
"The fire of Love comes to the gentle heart
Like as its virtue to a precious stone ;
To which no star its influence can impart
Till it is made a pure thing by the sun :
For when the sun hath smit
From out its essence that which there was
vile,
The star endoweth it.
And so the heart created by God's breath
Pure, true, and clean from guile,
A woman, like a star, enamoureth.
"In gentle heart Love for like reason is
For which the lamp's high flame is fanned
and bowed :
Clear, piercing bright, it shines for its own bliss
Nor would it burn there else, it is so proud.
For evil natures meet
With Love as it were water met with fire,
As cold abhorring heat.
Through gentle heart Love doth a track
divine,--
Like knowing like ; the same
As diamond runs through iron in the mine.
"The sun strikes full upon the mud all day ;
It remains vile, nor the sun's worth is less.
'By race I am gentle,' the proud man doth say :
He is the mud, the sun is gentleness.
Let no man predicate
That aught the name of gentleness should have,
Even in a king's estate,
Except the heart there be a gentle man's.
The star-beam lights the wave,--
Heaven holds the star and the star's radiance.
"God, in the understanding of high Heaven,
Burns more than in our sight the living sun :
There to behold His Face unveiled is given ;
And Heaven, whose will is homage paid to
One,
Fulfils the things which live
In God, from the beginning excellent.
So should my lady give
That truth which in her eyes is glorified,
On which her heart is bent,
To me whose service waiteth at her side.
"My lady, God shall ask, 'What daredst thou ?'
(When my soul stands with all her acts reviewed;)
'Thou passedst Heaven, into My sight, as now,
To make Me of vain love similitude.
To Me doth praise belong,
And to the Queen of all the realm of grace
Who endeth fraud and wrong.
Then may I plead : 'As though from Thee
he came,
Love wore an angel's face:
Lord, if I loved he; count it not my shame.'"
"But interposing Tydeus rushed between,
And with his shield protects the Lemnian
queen."
"De un confessor Sancto quiero fer una prosa,
Quiero fer una prosa en roman paladino,
En qual suele el pueblo fablar a su vecino,
Ca non so tan letrado per fer otro Latino."
Companion dear ! or sleeping or awaking,
Sleep not again ! for lo ! the morn is nigh,
And in the east that early star is breaking,
The day's forerunner, known unto mine eye ;
The morn, the morn is near.
Companion dear ! with carols sweet I call thee ;
Sleep not again ! I hear the birds' blithe song
Loud in the woodlands ; evil may befall thee,
And jealous eyes awaken, tarrying long,
Now that the morn is near.
'Companion dear ! forth from the window
looking,
Attentive mark the signs of yonder heaven ;
Judge if aright I read what they betoken :
Thine all the loss, if vain the warning gives;
The morn, the morn is near.
"Companion dear! since thou from hence straying,
Nor sleep nor rest these eyes have visited ;
My prayers unceasing to the Virgin paying,
That thou in peace thy backward way might
tread.
The morn, the morn is near.
"Companion dear hence to the fields with me !
Me thou forbad'st to slumber through the
night,
And I have watched that livelong night for
Thee;
But thou in song or me hast no delight,
And now the morn is near.
ANSWER.
"Companion dear ! so happily sojourning,
So blest am I, I care not forth to speed:
Here brightest beauty reigns, her smiles
adorning
Her dwelling-place, --then wherefore should I heed
The morn or jealous eyes?"
According to Nostrodamus he died in 1278. Notwithstanding his great repute, Dante gives the palm of excellence to Arnaud Daniel, his rival and contemporary. But this is not the general verdict of literary history.
Raynouard confirms this judgment, and says that, "in reading the works of
this Troubadour, it is difficult to conceive the cause of the great celebrity he enjoyed during his life."
Arnaud Daniel was the inventor of the Sestina, a song of six stanzas of six lines each, with the same rhymes repeated in all, though arranged in different and intricate order, which must be seen to be understood. He was also author of the metrical romance of Lancillotto, or Launcelot of the Lake, to which Dante doubtless refers in his expression prose di romanzi or proses of romance. The following anecdote is from the old Provencal authority, quoted both by Millot and Raynouard, and is thus translatedby Miss Costello, Early Poetry of France p. 37:
"Arnaud visited the court of Richard Coeur de Lion in England, and encountered there a jongleur, who defied hint to a trial of skill, and boasted of being able to make more difficult rhymes than Arnaud, a proficiency on which he chiefly prided himself. He accepted the challenge, and the two poets separated, and retired to their respective chambers to prepare for the contest. The Muse of Arnaud was not propitious, and he vainly endeavoured to string two rhymes together. His rival, on the other hand, quickly caught the inspiration. The king had allowed ten days as the term of preparation, five for composition, and the remainder for learning it by heart to sing before the court. On the third day the jongleur declared that he had finished his poem, and was ready to recite it, but Arnaud replied that he had not yet thought of his. It was the jongleur's custom to repeat his verses out loud every day, in order to learn them better, and Arnaud, who was in vain endeavouring to devise some means to save himself front the mockery of the court at being outdone in this contest, happened to overhear the jongleur singing. He went to his door and listened, and succeeded in retaining the words and the air. On the day appointed they both appeared before the king. Arnaud desired to be allowed to sing first, and immediately gave the song which the jongleur had composed. The latter, stupified with astonishment, could only exclaim : 'It is my song, it is my song.' 'Impossible' cried the king ; but the jongleur, persisting, requested Richard to interrogate Arnaud, who would not dare, he said, to deny it. Daniel confessed the fact, and related the manner in which the affair had been conducted, which amused Richard far more than the song itself. The stakes of the wager were restored to each, and the king loaded them both with presents."
According to Nostrodamus, Arnaud died about 1189. There is no other reason for making him speak in Provencal than the evident delight which Dante took in the sound of the words, and the peculiar flavour they give to the close of the canto. Raynouard says that the writings of none of the Troubadours have been so disfigured by copyists as those of Arnaud. This would seem to be true of the very lines which Dante writes for him ; as there are at least seven different readings of them.
Here Venturi has again the indiscretion to say that Arnaud answers Dante in "a kind of lingua-franca part Provencal and part Catalan, joining together the perfidious French with the vile Spanish, perhaps to show that Arnaud was a clever speaker of the two." And again Biagioli suppresses him with "that unbridled beast of a Venturi," and this "most potent argument of his presumptuous ignorance and impertinence."
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 26.137
Venturi has the indiscretion to say : "This is a disgusting compliment after the manner of the French ; in the Italian fashion we should say, 'You will do me a favour, if you will tell me your name.'" Whereupon Biagioli thunders at him in this wise : "Infamous dirty dog that you are, how can you call this a compliment after the manner of the French? How can you set off against it what any cobbler might say? Away! and a murrain on you!"
Longfellow (1897), Purg. 26.142
Arnaud Daniel, the Troubadour of the thirteenth century, whom Dante lauds so highly, and whom Petrarca calls "the Grand Master of Love," was born of a noble family at the castle of Ribeyrac in Périgord. Millot, Hist. des Troub., II. 479, says of him : "In all ages there have been false reputations, founded on some individual judgment, whose authority has prevailed without examination, until at last criticism discusses, the truth penetrates, and the phantom of prejudice vanishes. Such has been the reputation of Arnaud Daniel."