No More Learning

24
? SONG
Voices in the Wind.
We have worn the blue and vair,
And all the sea-caves
Know us of old, and know our new-found mate. There 's many a secret stair
The sea-folk climb . . .
Out of the Wind. Oime, Oime !
I wonder why the wind, even the wind doth seem To mock me now, all night, all night, and
I have strayed among the cliffs here.
They say, some day I '11 fall
Down through the sea-bit fissures, and no more Know the warm cloak of sun, or bathe
The dew across my tired eyes to comfort them. They try to keep me hid within four walls.
I will not stay !
Oime!
And the wind " Oime " saith, !
I am quite tired now.
I know the grass
Must grow somewhere along this Thracian coast, If only he would come some little while and find
it me.
ENDETH THE LAMENT FOR GLAUCUS 25
An Idyl for
Glaucus
? MARVOIL 1
A POOR clerk I, "Arnaut the less" they call me,
And because I have small mind to Day long, long day cooped on a stool
A-jumbling o' figures for Maitre Jacques Polin, I ha' taken to rambling the South here.
The Vicomte of Beziers 's not such a bad lot.
I made rimes to his lady this three year:
Vers and canzone, till that damn'd son of Aragon, Alfonso the half-bald, took to hanging
His helmet at Beziers.
Then came what might come, to wit: three men and
one woman,
Beziers off at Mont-Ausier, I and his lady Singing the stars in the turrets of Beziers, And one lean Aragonese cursing the seneschal To the end that you see, friends:
Aragon cursing in Aragon, Beziers busy at Beziers Bored to an inch of extinction,
Tibors all tongue and temper at Mont-Ausier, Me! in this damn'd inn of Avignon,
Stringing long verse for the Burlatz;
All for one half-bald, knock-knee'd king of the
Aragonese,
Alfonso, Quatro, poke-nose.
And if when I am dead
They take the trouble to tear out this wall here, They '11 know more of Arnaut of Marvoil Than half his canzoni say of him.
1
See note at end of volume. 26
sit
t
? As for will and testament I leave none,
Save this: "Vers and canzone to the Countess of
Beziers
In return for the first kiss she gave me. "
May her eyes and her cheek be fair
To all men except the King of Aragon,
And may I come speedily to Beziers
Whither my desire and my dream have preceded
me.
O hole in the wall here ! be thou my jongleur As ne'er had I other, and when the wind blows,
Sing thou the grace of the Lady of Beziers,
For even as thou art hollow before I fill thee with
this parchment,
So is my heart hollow when she filleth not mine eyes, And so were my mind hollow, did she not fill utterly
my thought.
Wherefore, O hole in the wall here,
When the wind blows sigh thou for my sorrow That I have not the Countess of Beziers Close in my arms here.
Even as thou shalt soon have this parchment.