f our day, written without a thought of Giraud
de Borneil--

Heigh! Brother mine, art a-waking or a-sleeping:
Mind'st thou the merry moon a many summers fled?
Mind'st thou the green and the dancing and the leaping?
Mind'st thou the haycocks and the moon above them creeping?...

Or take Bernard de Ventadour's--

Quand erba vertz, e fuelha par
E'l flor brotonon per verjan,
E'l rossinhols autet e clar
Leva sa votz e mov son chan,
Joy ai de luy, e joy ai de la flor,
Joy ai de me, e de me dons maior.

Why, it runs straight off into English verse--

When grass is green and leaves appear
With flowers in bud the meads among,
And nightingale aloft and clear
Lifts up his voice and pricks his song,
Joy, joy have I in song and flower,
Joy in myself, and in my lady more.

And that may be doggerel; yet what is it but

It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino,
That o'er the green cornfield did pass
In the spring-time, the only pretty ring-time--

or

When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.

Nay, flatter the Anglo-Saxon tradition by picking its very best--and I
suppose it hard to find better than the much-admired opening of Piers
Plowman, in which that tradition shot up like the flame of a dying
candle:

Bote in a Mayes Morwnynge--on Malverne hulles
Me bi-fel a ferly--a Feyrie me thouhte;
I was weori of wandringe--and wente me to reste
Under a brod banke--bi a Bourne syde,
And as I lay and leonede--and lokede on the watres,
I slumberde in a slepynge--hit sownede so murie.

This is good, solid stuff, no doubt: but tame, inert, if not actually
lifeless. As M. Jusserand says of Anglo-Saxon poetry in general, it is
like the river Saone--one doubts which way it flows. How tame in
comparison with this, for example!--

In somer, when the shawes be sheyne,
And leves be large and long,
Hit is full mery in feyre foreste
To here the foulys song:

To se the dere draw to the dale
And leve the hilles hee,
And shadow hem in the leves grene
Under the grene-wode tre.

Hit befel on Whitsontide,
Erly in a May mornyng,
The Son up feyre can shyne,
And the briddis mery can syng.