I saw in the middle between these two points
a beautiful meadow, thronging with people
of every station, the poor and the needful
who slaved at their labours as this hard world requires them.
Some trudged behind ploughs with no chance of a respite,
sowing and seeding. They worked without ceasing
to win for the people what the greedy would waste.
Others grew proud and dressed up accordingly,
their faces and get-up a sight for sore eyes.
But many more, it has to be said,
lived in penance and prayer for the love of Our Lord,
in the confident hope of ascending to Heaven.
As monks and nuns they remained in their cells,
never wishing to dash round the country
on the lookout for luxuries to pamper their whims.
Some took to business and did very well –
at least as we see it – ‘getting on in the world’.
More had a fine time, acting the clown
With dancing and singing and swearing their heads off,
inventing daft stories, making fools of themselves.
Such people imagine that work’s a poor option.
*
While I was dreaming, Nature enlightened me,
Calling my name and saying to take notice
While she led me on through all the world’s marvels.
And on this great mountain named Earth, I imagined,
I was first led away to find out in practice
How God might be loved through observing his creatures.
The sun I saw, and the sea, and the sand by the shore;
I saw how the birds make their nests in the trees;
No man has the skill to equal the least of them.
Who on earth, then I wondered, tutored the magpie
To arrange all the sticks that she lays on to breed?
No joiner, I’m certain, could make a dome like it.
What kind of a builder might follow that blueprint?
There were visions besides that I marvelled at further:
Other bird pairs that sheltered their eggs
In the deepest seclusion on moor and in marsh, in swamp or on water,
So no-one could find them but the two of themselves.
Then I looked out to sea and beyond to the stars.
Such marvels I saw I can hardly describe them:
Flowers in the wood of beautiful colours,
And all shining through the green grass and brown earth.
Some were rank and some scented: a magical world
That I haven’t the time or the skill to describe.
There’s provision enough here, faith has no doubt,
For no life ever given lacked the means of survival,
An element to live in and a reason for living.
First the wild worm lives in wet earth;
The fish lives in water, the cricket in fire.
The curlew by nature lives on the air,
So of any bird its meat is the cleanest.
Animals live on grass, grain and rootcrops:
This shows that man too has a natural food
Which is not only bread but sustained faith and love.
WILLIAM LANGLAND
translated by Bernard O’Donoghue
In Defence of Women
Woe to him who speaks ill of women! it is not right to abuse them. They have not deserved, that I know, all the blame they have always had.
Sweet are their words, exquisite their voice, that sex for which my love is great; woe to him who does not scruple to revile them, woe to him who speaks ill of women!
They do no murder nor treachery, nor any grim or hateful deed, they do no sacrilege to church nor bell; woe to him who speaks ill of women!
Certain it is, there has never been born bishop nor king nor great prophet without fault, but from a woman; woe to him who speaks ill of women!
They are thrall to their own hearts, they love a man slender and sound – it would be long before they would dislike him. Woe to him who speaks ill of women!
An old fat greybeard, they do not desire a tryst with him – dearer to them is a young lad, though poor. Woe to him who speaks ill of women!
EARL GERALD FITZGERALD
translated by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson
from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
So the morning dawns when man remembers
the day our redeemer was born to die,
and every house on earth is joyful for Lord Jesus.
Their day was no different, being a diary of delights:
banquets and buffets were beautifully cooked
and dutifully served to diners at the dais.
The ancient elder sat highest at the table
with the lord, I believe, in the chair to her left;
the sweeter one and Gawain took seats in the centre
and were first at the feast to dine, then food
was carried around as custom decrees
and served to each man as his status deserved.
There was feasting, there was fun, and such feelings of joy
as could not be conveyed by quick description,
yet to tell it in detail would take too much time.
But I’m aware that Gawain and the beautiful woman
found such comfort and closeness in each other’s company
through warm exchanges of whispered words
and refined conversation free from foulness
that their pleasure surpassed all princely sports
by far.
Beneath the din of drums
men followed their affairs,
and trumpets thrilled and thrummed
as those two tended theirs.
They drank and danced all day and the next
and danced and drank the day after that,
then St John’s Day passed with a gentler joy
as the Christmas feasting came to a close.
Guests were to go in the greyness of dawn,
so they laughed and dined as the dusk darkened,
swaying and swirling to music and song.
Then at last, in the lateness, they upped and left
towards distant parts along different paths.
Gawain offered his goodbyes, but was ushered by his host
to his host’s own chamber and the heat of its chimney,
waylaid by the lord so the lord might thank him
profoundly and profusely for the favour he had shown
in honouring his house at that hallowed season
and lighting every corner of the castle with his character.
‘For as long as I live my life shall be better
that Gawain was my guest at God’s own feast.’
‘By God,’ said Gawain, ‘but the gratitude goes to you.
May the High King of Heaven repay your honour.
Your requests are now this knight’s commands.
I am bound by your bidding, no boon is too high
to say.’
At length his lordship tried
to get his guest to stay.
But proud Gawain replied
he must now make his way.
ANON
translated by Simon Armitage
from Pearl
One thing I know for certain: that she
was peerless, pearl who would have added
light to any prince’s life
however bright with gold. None
could touch the way she shone
in any light, so smooth, so small –
she was a jewel above all others.
So pity me the day I lost her
in this garden where she fell
beneath the grass into the earth.
I stand bereft, struck to the heart
with love and loss. My spotless pearl.
I’ve gazed a hundred times at the place
sh
e left me, grieving for that gift
which swept away all shadow, that face
which was the antidote to sorrow.
And though this watching sears my heart
and wrings the wires of sadness tighter,
still the song this silence sings me
is the sweetest I have heard –
the countless quiet hours in which
her pale face floats before me, mired
in mud and soil, a perfect jewel
spoiled, my spotless pearl.
In the place where such riches lie rotting
a carpet of spices will spring up and spread,
blossoms of blue and white and red
which fire in the full light facing the sun.
Where a pearl is planted deep in the dark
no fruit or flower could ever fade;
all grasscorn grows from dying grain
so new wheat can be carried home.
From goodness other goodness grows:
so beautiful a seed can’t fail
to fruit or spices fail to flower
fed by a precious, spotless pearl.
So I came to this very same spot
in the green of an August garden, height
and heart of summer, at Lammas time
when corn is cut with curving scythes.
And I saw that the little hill where she fell
was a shaded place showered with spices:
pink gillyflower, ginger and purple gromwell,
powdered with peonies scattered like stars.
But more than their loveliness to the eye,
the sweetest fragrance seemed to float
in the air there also – I knew beyond doubt
that’s where she lay, my spotless pearl.
Caught in the chill grasp of grief I stood
in that place clasping my hands, seized
by the grip on my heart of longing and loss.
Though reason told me to be still
I mourned for my poor imprisoned pearl
with all the fury and force of a quarrel.
The comfort of Christ called out to me
but still I wrestled in wilful sorrow.
Then the power and perfume of those flowers
filled up my head and felled me, slipped me
into sudden sleep in the place
where she lay beneath me. My girl.
ANON
translated by Jane Draycott
The Prologue
The fables told by poets in old times
Are by no means all grounded upon truth
Yet their attractive style, their craft and themes
Still make for pleasant listening; and with
Good cause, since they, from the beginning,
Aimed to reprove man’s whole wrong way of living
Under the figure of another thing.
Just as through a hard unyielding ground,
If it is laboured with real diligence,
The flowers will spring and young shoots of green corn,
Wholesome and good for human sustenance,
So sweetly edifying moral lessons
Spring from the well-worked plot of poetry
For those who have ears to hear and eyes to see.
The shell upon the nut, though hard and tough,
Holds the kernel and is still delightful.
Just so there lies a doctrine of great worth
And fruitfulness beneath a made-up fable.
And scholars say it is most profitable
To mix the merry in with graver matter:
It makes the spirit lift and time go quicker.
Furthermore, a bow that’s always bent
Goes weak and gives and loses all its spring.
The same is true of minds always intent
On earnest thought and constant studying.
To alleviate what’s sad by adding something
Cheerful is good; Aesop expressed it thus:
Dulcius arrident seria picta iocis.
Which author’s Latin, masters, by your leave,
Submitting myself here to your correction,
I would convert to mother tongue and prove
Equal to the task of a translation –
Not out of vain presumption of my own,
But at the invitation of a lord
Whose name it is not needful to record.
In homely language and rough turns of speech
I have to write, for always eloquence
And rhetoric remained beyond my reach.
Therefore I humbly pray your reverence
That if you find here through my negligence
Anything much shortened – or protracted –
By your good will and good grace you’ll correct it.
My author in his fables records how
Wild animals spoke sense and understood,
Debated point for point, could argue too,
Propound a syllogism and conclude;
He shows by example and similitude
How often humans in their own behaviour
Resemble the wild animals in nature.
No wonder that a man grows like a beast!
Loving each carnal and each foul delight
Until no shame can hold or halt his lust,
He soon indulges every appetite
Which through repetition and bad habit
Roots in the mind so ineradicably
He is transformed: then bestiality.
This scholar, Aesop, as I have been telling,
Composed in verse of elegance and weight
A coded book, for he was unwilling
That readers high or low should underrate
His art; and first of a cock he wrote,
Hunting for food, that found a brilliant stone.
His is the fable you shall hear anon.
ROBERT HENRYSON
translated by Seamus Heaney
The Toad and the Mouse
Upon a time, as Aesop makes report,
A little mouse came to a riverside.
She couldn’t wade, her mouse-shanks were so short,
She couldn’t swim, she had no horse to ride,
So willy-nilly there she had to bide
And to and fro beside that river deep
She ran and cried with many a piteous peep.
‘Help, help me over,’ cried the poor wee mouse,
‘For love of God, someone, across this stream.’
With that a toad, in water nearby, rose
(For toads by nature nimbly duck and swim),
And showed her head to mount the bank and come
Croaking ashore, then gave her greetings thus:
‘Good morning! And what brings you here, Miss Mouse?’
‘The corn’, she said, ‘in yon field, do you see it?
The ripened oats, the barley, peas and wheat?
I’m hungry and I’d love to get to it
But the water here’s too wide, so here I sit
And on this side get not a thing to eat
But hard nuts that I have to gnaw and bore.
Over beyond, I’d feast on better fare.
‘I have no boat, there is no ferryman,
And if there were, I have no coin to pay.’
‘Sister,’ said toad, ‘would you stop worrying.
Do what I tell you and I shall find a way
Without horse, bridge or boat or any ferry
To get you over safely, never fear –
And not wet once a whisker or a hair.’
‘I greatly wonder’, said the little mouse,
‘How you can, without fin or feather, float.
This river is so deep and dangerous
I think you’d drown as soon as you’d wade out.
Tell me, therefore, what is the gift or secret
You own to bring you over this dark flood?’
And thus in explanation spoke the toad:
‘With my two feet for
oars, webbed and broad,
I row the stream,’ she said, ‘and quietly pull,
And though it’s deep and dangerous to wade,
I swim it to and fro at my own will
And cannot sink, because my open gill
Vents and voids the water I breathe in.
So truly, I am not afraid to drown.’
The mouse gazed up into her furrowed face,
Her wrinkled cheeks, her ridged lips like a lid
Hasped shut on her hoarse voice, her hanging brows,
Her lanky wobbly legs and wattled hide;
Then, taken aback, she faced the toad and cried,
‘If I know any physiognomy,
The signs on you are of untruth and envy.
‘For scholars say the main inclination
Of a man’s thought will usually proceed
According to the corporal complexion,
The good or evil prompting in the blood.
A thrawn feature means a nature twisted.
The Latin tag affords a proof of this –
Mores, it says, are mirrored in the face.’
‘No,’ said the toad, ‘that proverb isn’t true,
For what looks good is often a false showing.
The bilberry may have a dreary hue
But will be picked while primrose is left growing.
The face may fail to be the heart’s true token.
Therefore I find this judgement still applies:
‘You shouldn’t judge a man just by his face.’
ROBERT HENRYSON
translated by Seamus Heaney
A Girl’s Hair
Shall I have the girl I love,
The grove of light, my truelove,
With her silk top like a star
And her head’s golden pillar?
Dragon fire lights a doorway,
Three chains, like the Milky Way.
A heaven of hair she’ll set fire
In one bush, like a bonfire.
Broom or great birchtree’s sweetness,
Maelor’s yellow-headed lass,
The Map and the Clock Page 5