No More Learning

Bolswert, Abraham Bloemaert, Anonymous, 1590 - 1662
The Rijksmuseum

Le Testament: Les Regrets De La Belle Heaulmiere

By chance, I heard the belle complain,

The one we called the Armouress,

Longing to be a girl again,

Talking like this, more or less:

'Oh, old age, proud in wickedness,

You've battered me so, and why?

Who cares, who, for my distress,

Or whether at all your blows I die?

You've stolen away that great power

My beauty ordained for me

Over priests and clerks, my hour,

When never a man I'd see

Would fail to offer his all in fee,

Whatever remorse he'd later show,

But what was abandoned readily,

Beggars now scorn to know.

Many a man I then refused -

Which wasn't wise of me, no jest -

For love of a boy, cunning too,

To whom I gave all my largesse.

I feigned to him unwillingness,

But, by my soul, I loved him bad.

What he showed was his roughness,

Loving me only for what I had.

He could drag me through the dirt,

Trample me underfoot, I'd love him,

Break my back, whatever's worse,

If only he'd ask for a kiss again,

I'd soon forget then every pain.

A glutton, full of what he could win,

He'd embrace me - with him I've lain.

What's he left me? Shame and sin.

Now he's dead, these thirty years:

And I live on, old, and grey.

When I think of those times, with tears,

What I was, what I am today,

View myself naked: turn at bay,

Seeing what I am no longer,

Poor, dry, meagre, worn away,

I almost forget myself in anger.

Where's my smooth brow gone:

My arching lashes, yellow hair,

Wide-eyed glances, pretty ones,

That took in the cleverest there:

Nose not too big or small: a pair

Of delicate little ears, the chin

Dimpled: a face oval and fair,

Lovely lips with crimson skin?

The fine slender shoulder-blades:

The long arms, with tapering hands:

My small breasts: the hips well made

Full and firm, and sweetly planned,

All Love's tournaments to withstand:

The broad flanks: the nest of hair,

With plump thighs firmly spanned,

Inside its little garden there?

Now wrinkled forehead, hair gone grey:

Sparse eyelashes: eyes so dim,

That laughed and flashed once every way,

And reeled their roaming victims in:

Nose bent from beauty, ears thin,

Hanging down like moss, a face,

Pallid, dead and bleak, the chin

Furrowed, a skinny-lipped disgrace.
This is the end of human beauty:

Shrivelled arms, hands warped like feet:

The shoulders hunched up utterly:

Breasts. . . . what? In full retreat,

Same with the hips, as with the teats:

Little nest, hah! See the thighs,

Not thighs, thighbones, poor man's meat,

Blotched like sausages, and dried.

She Who Was the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife

'She Who Was the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife'
Auguste Rodin (France, 1840 - 1917)
LACMA Collections

That's how the bon temps we regret

Among us, poor old idiots,

Squatting on our haunches, set

All in a heap like woollen lots

Round a hemp fire men forgot,

Soon kindled, and soon dust,

Once so lovely, that cocotte. . .

So it goes for all of us.

Le Testament: Ballade: 'Item: Donne A Ma Povre Mere'

Item

This I give to my poor mother

As a prayer now, to our Mistress

- She who bore bitter pain for me,

God knows, and also much sadness -

I've no other castle or fortress,

That my body and soul can summon,

When I'm faced with life's distress,

Nor has my mother, poor woman:

Ballade

'Lady of Heaven, earthly queen,

Empress of the infernal regions,

Receive me, a humble Christian,

To live among the chosen ones,

Though I'm worth less than anyone.

Your grace, my Lady and Mistress

Is greater than my sinfulness,

Grace without which, I tell no lie,

None deserve their blessedness.

In this faith let me live and die.

Say to your Son that I am His.

Through Him all my sins are lost:

Forgive me, as Mary Egypt was,

Or, so they say, Theophilus,

Who by your grace was still blameless,

Though he vowed the Devil a guest.