Rheims. His river of Loire, and then the Eure, and then the
Seine, and even the field where he had fallen were reconquered.
Willoughby had lost Paris to Richemont four years before Charles of
Orleans was freed on a ransom of half his mother's fortune. It was not
until the November of 1440 that he saw his country-side again.

The verse formed in that long endurance (a style which he preserved to
the end in the many poems after his release) may seem at a first reading
merely mediaeval. There is wholly lacking in it the riot of creation, nor
can one see at first the Renaissance coming in with Charles of Orleans.

Indeed it was laid aside as mediaeval, and was wholly forgotten for three
hundred years. No one had even heard of him for all those centuries till
Sallier, that learned priest, pacing, full of his Hebrew and Syriac, the
rooms of the royal library which Louis XV had but lately given him to
govern, found the manuscript of the poems and wrote an essay on them for
the Academy.

The verse is full of allegory; it is repetitive; it might weary one with
the savour of that unhappy fifteenth century when the human mind lay
under oppression, and only the rich could speak their insignificant
words; a foreigner especially might find it all dry bones, but his
judgement would be wrong. Charles of Orleans has a note quite new and
one that after him never failed, but grew in volume and in majesty until
it filled the great chorus of the Pleiade--the Lyrical note of direct
personal expression. Perhaps the wars produced it in him; the lilt of
the marching songs was still spontaneous:

Gentil Duc de Lorraine, vous avez grand renom,
Et votre renommee passe au dela des monts
Et vous et vos gens d'arme, et tous vos compagnons
Au premier coup qu'ils frappent, abattent les Donjons.
Tirez, tirez bombardes, serpentines, Canons!

Whatever the cause, this spontaneity and freshness run through all the
mass of short and similar work which he wrote down.

The spring and sureness, the poise of these light nothings make them a
flight of birds.

See how direct is this:

Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder!
La gracieuse, bonne et belle.

or this:

Le lendemain du premier jour de Mai
Dedans mon lit ainsi que je dormoye
Au point du jour advint que je sonjeay.

Everywhere his words make tunes for themselves and everywhere he himself
appears in his own verses, simple, charming, slight, but with memorie