u
a share of its melancholy.

That melancholy you can soon discover to be as permanent a quality in
the verse as it was in the mind of the man who wrote it.

_THE COMPLAINT._

_Las! Mort qui t'a fait si hardie,
De prendre la noble Princesse
Qui estoit mon confort, ma vie,
Mon bien, mon plaisir, ma richesse!
Puis que tu as prins ma maistresse,
Prens moy aussi son serviteur,
Car j'ayme mieulx prouchainement
Mourir que languir en tourment
En paine, soussi et doleur._

_Las! de tous biens estoit garnie
Et en droite fleur de jeunesse!
Je pry a Dieu qu'il te maudie,
Faulse Mort, plaine de rudesse!
Se prise l'eusses en vieillesse,
Ce ne fust pas si grant rigueur;
Mais prise l'as hastivement
Et m'as laissie piteusement
En paine, soussi et doleur._

_Las! je suis seul sans compaignie!
Adieu ma Dame, ma liesse!
Or est nostre amour departie,
Non pour tant, je vous fais promesse
Que de prieres, a largesse,
Morte vous serviray de cueur,
Sans oublier aucunement;
Et vous regretteray souvent
En paine, soussi et doleur._

_ENVOI._

_Dieu, sur tout souverain Seigneur,
Ordonnez, par grace et doulceur,
De l'ame d'elle, tellement
Qu'elle ne soit pas longuement
En paine, soussi et doleur._

THE TWO ROUNDELS OF SPRING.
(_The 41st and 43rd of the "Rondeaux."_)

These two Rondeaux, of which we may also presume, though very vaguely,
that they were written in England (for they are in the manner of his
earlier work), are by far the most famous of the many things he wrote;
and justly, for they have all these qualities.

_First_, they are exact specimens of their style. The Roundel should
interweave, repeat itself, and then recover its original strain, and
these two exactly give such unified diversity.

_Secondly_: they were evidently written in a moment of that unknown
power when words suggest something fuller than their own meaning, and in
which simplicity itself broadens the mind of the reader. So that it is
impossible to put one's finger upon this or that and say this adjective,
that order of the words has given the touch of vividness.

_Thirdly_: they have in them still a living spirit of reality; read them
to-day in Winter, and you feel the Spring. It is this quality perhaps
which most men have seized in them, an