CHAPTER X LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH MEDIAEVAL POETRY-CHAUCER AND HIS SUCCESSORS THE period of conquest, of disintegration, of transition, of renewed national unity which follows, supplies little to the Landscape of Poetry. The work then done, whilst the "Middle English" was slowly forming itself, enormous as it is, may be hence passed over. Layamon and Ormin; the Alexander, the Tristram, the Havelok; Mannyng, Rolle, Minot go by like great shadows. Nor shall I here attempt to sketch the part played by our national history in developing our poetry—a subject which, however interesting, lies outside our present attempt. It is wellnigh another English, another literature, that the thirteenth century begins to present. Songs of that date, devoted mainly to love or to religion, frequently open with a lyrical reference to the seasons and their characteristic birds or flowers, but hardly offer the landscape as such. Here, however, we have that early and well-known carol Summer is y-comen in, Loud sing cuckoo ! Groweth seed and bloweth mead And springeth the wood now : Ewe bleateth after lamb, Loweth cow after calf; Bullock starteth, buck verteth : 1 1 Goes to harbour among the greenery, the fern. This is the current explanation. I would humbly suggest that verteth may be the verb verde, as Merry sing cuckoo ! Cuckoo cuckoo ! Well sings thou, Cuckoo ; Nor cease thou never now. Sing cuckoo now, Sing cuckoo ! Another lyric sets forth the good effects of the Spring. I quote one stanza— Lent is come with Love to town, With blossoms and with birdës roune,1 That all this bliss bringeth: Daisies in these dales, Notes sweet of nightingales, Our next example, which carries us to about 1360, differs greatly from the landscape specimens just quoted, both in its length and its highly developed style-points wherein the poem named simply Pearl, testifies gloriously to the great advance of our literature in the later Middle Ages. It is written in West Midland dialect, and endeavours to unite the old alliterative measure with complex romance metres. Pearl is the visionary lament of a father over his lost daughter Margaret, dead in early childhood, and found by him in glory within a Paradise described in the opening stanzas. Mr. I. Gollancz, of Christ's College, Cambridge, to whom we owe an admirable edition of the poem (printed from the unique MS. in the British Museum), 2 justly compares it to Tennyson's In Memoriam an In Memoriam of the fourteenth century, and for its singular feeling and beauty, well deserving the prelusive quatrain written for this edition by Tennyson himself. The nameless author who was apparently born cir. 1330 in North-West England, may, it has been suggested, have been Ralph Strode, the "Philosophical," to whom and to Gower, Chaucer dedicated his Troilus. used by Layamon in his version of Wace's History, written before 1200, and meaning simply fared, went (Ellis, Specimens), and the sense will simply be, "The bull starts, the buck runs." 1 Round, catch. 2 Published by D. Nutt (1891). The supernatural landscape is that mainly painted in Pearl; which thus forms a kind of parallel to the Gardens of Love, which we noticed under Italian poetry; it is not simple Nature on which the writer's eye was fixed. Yet the poem has such freshness and charm-it so truly lifts the landscape of earth to the scenery of heaven-as to claim a place in this essay. The Vision begins thus, apparently over the child's little grave To that spot which I in words set forth But though so seemly was the scene, In this case I have roughly tried to give some notion of the poet's singular and graceful metre, with justice compared by Mr. Gollancz to the sonnet form in its effect. rhymeless lines rhyme together in the original. follow the editor's own skilful modern version But my four We will now My spirit thence sped forth into space, In quest of adventure, where marvels be. I knew not where that region was ; I was borne, iwis, where the cliffs rose sheer ; Where rocks so radiant were to see, That none can trow how rich was the light 1 Chosen because its hard, round seed might be compared to a pearl. For never a web by mortal spun Was half so wondrous fair. The hill-sides there were crown'd And holts and woods, all bright with boles And trembling leaves, thick on every branch, With shimmering sheen they glisten'd, Touch'd by the gleam of the glades, And the gravel that roll'd upon that strand The sun's own light had paled before Presently he reaches a heavenly river O the marvels of that wondrous stream!- As light through glass they glimmer'd and glow'd,— In a winter night, while the weary sleep. Would that space allowed me to quote from the vision of the fair child herself, and the dialogue between her and the father, equally beautiful in its ancient music and in its depth of religious and human feeling. The glory and dignity of innocence, the duty and reward of submission to the will of Heaven, have never been set forth with more charm and persuasiveness. Let me hope it may lead some to make acquaintance with Pearl, perhaps the most purely and ideally beautiful specimen of our elder poetry which good fortune has left us. There is probably no great poet to whom man was the proper subject for man, more exclusively than Chaucer. Hence his own voluminous work but sparingly represents Nature and landscape. Yet here and there instances occur, slight perhaps in themselves, yet revealing the sure, swift, evermelodious handling of this Chorus-leader of English poetry. Our first example is very characteristic, not only of the tone of classical poetry, but of our own up to a very recent period. It is taken from the Franklin's Tale, and put in the mouth of the heroine Dorigen Eternal God! that through thy purveyánce In idle,1 as men say, ye nothing make; Of work, than any fair creatión Of such a perfect wisë God and a stable, Why have ye wrought this work unreasonable? See ye not, Lord, how mankind it destroyeth? Dorigen goes on to speak of the hundred thousand whom she fancies have been dashed against rocks and slain. This is the general aspect of the sea in our poetry till modern days. Her friends then lead her for comfort to a garden -May had painted with his softë showers That never was there garden of such price,3 Th' odour of flowers, and the freshë sight, That e'er was born, but-if too great sickness Or too great sorrow held it in distress; So full it was of beauty with pleasánce. Next I take a wood-scene from the "great Temple of Mars in "Thrace," thus forcibly described in the Knight's Tale 2 Works mischief. 1 In vain. 3 Of so much value unless it were . |