ce cuit, nule plus orde vie.
je n'aim mie lor compaignie,
si m'ait dex, qant je sui sains:
honiz est qui chiet en lor mains.
par foi, qant je malades fui,
moi covint soffrir lor ennui.

_Testaments_ of the satirical kind, chiefly noteworthy for the brilliant
use which Villon made of the tradition of composing them, _resveries_
and _fatrasies_ (nonsense poems with a more or less satirical drift),
parodies of the offices of the Church, of its sermons, of the miracle
plays, are the chief remaining divisions of the poetry which, under a
light and scoffing envelope, conceals a serious purpose.

[Sidenote: Didactic verse. Philippe de Thaun.]

Such things have at all times been composed in verse, and the reason is
sufficiently obvious. In the first place, the intention of the writers
is to a certain extent masked, and in the second, the reader's attention
is attracted. But the middle ages by no means confined the use of verse
to such cases. Downright instruction was, as often as not, the object of
the verse writer in those days. The earliest, and as such the most
curious of didactic poems, are those of Philippe de Thaun, an Englishman
of Norman extraction, who wrote in the first quarter of the twelfth
century. His two works are a _Comput_, or Chronological Treatise,
dedicated to an uncle of his, who was chaplain to Hugh Bigod, Earl of
Norfolk, and a _Bestiary_, or Zoological Catalogue, dedicated to Adela
of Louvain, the wife of Henry the First. Written before the vogue of the
versified Arthurian Romances had consecrated the octosyllable, these
poems are in couplets of six syllables. Their great age, and to a
certain extent their literary merit, deserve an extract:--

Monosceros est beste,
un corn ad en la teste,
pur ceo ad si a nun.
de buc ele ad facun.
par pucele eat prise,
or oez en quel guise,
quant hom le volt cacer
et prendre et enginner,
si vent horn al orest
u sis repaires est;
la met une pucele
hors de sein sa mamele,
e par odurement
monosceros la sent;
dune vent a la pucele,
si baiset sa mamele,
en sun devant se dort,
issi vent a sa mort;
li hom survent atant,
ki l'ocit en dormant,
u trestut vif le prent,
si fait puis sun talent.
grant chose signefie,
ne larei nel vus die.
Monosceros griu est,
en franceis un-corn est:
beste de tel baillie
Jhesu Crist signefie;