May, sweet May, again is come; May, that frees the land from gloom. Up, then, children, we will go Where the blooming roses grow. In a joyful company We the bursting flowers will see; Up! your festal dress prepare! Where gay hearts are meeting, there May hath pleasures most inviting Heart, and sight, and ear delighting: Listen to the bird's sweet song. Hark! how soft it floats along! Courtly dames our pleasures share. Never saw I May so fair; Therefore, dancing will we go: Youths rejoice, the flowrets blow; Sing ye! join the chorus gay! Hail this merry, merry May!
At least as beautiful in their tributes to their lady loves and their lyric descriptions of the beauties of Spring, were the Troubadours whose tuneful trifles, sometimes deserving of much more serious consideration than the application of such a term to them would seem to demand, have come down to us though the centuries. One of the best known of these is Arnaud de Marveil, who was born in very humble circumstances but who succeeded in raising himself by his poetic genius to be the companion of ruling princes and the friend of the high nobility. Among the provencals he has been called the great Master of Love, though this is a name which Petrarch reserves especially for Arnaud Daniel, while he calls Marveil the less famous of the Arnauds. An example of his work as the Poet of Love, that is typical of what is usually considered to have { 190} been the favorite mode of the Troubadour poets runs as follows:
All I behold recalls the memory Of her I love. The freshness of the hour Th' enamell'd fields, the many coloured flower, Speaking of her, move me to melody. Had not the poets, with their courtly phrase, Saluted many a fair of meaner worth, I could not now have render'd thee the praise So justly due, of "Fairest of the Earth." To name thee thus had been to speak thy name, And waken, o'er thy cheek, the blush of modest shame.
An example of the love of nature which characterizes some of Arnaud de Marveil's work will serve to show how thoroughly he entered into the spirit of the spring-time and how much all the sights and sounds of nature found an echo in his poetic spirit. The translation of this as of the preceding specimen from Arnaud is taken from the English edition of the Historical View of the Literature of the South of Europe by Sismondi, and this translation we owe to Thomas Roscoe, the well known author of the life of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who considering that Sismondi does not furnish enough of specimens of this Troubadour poet, inserts the following verses, for the translation of which he acknowledges himself indebted to the kindness of friends, a modest concealment doubtless of his own work: