No More Learning

Kalenda maia

Calends of May

Nor leafy spray

Nor songs of birds, nor flowers gay

Please me today

My Lady, nay,

Lest there's a fine message I pray

From your loveliness, to relay

The pleasures new love and joy may

Display

And I'll play

For you, true lady, I say,

And lay

By the way

The jealous ones, ere I go away.

My belle amie

Let it not be

That any man scorns me from jealousy,

He'd pay me,

Dearly indeed

If lovers were parted by such as he;

Never would I live happily,

No happiness without you I see;

I'd flee

Run free

No man would find me readily;

An end

Of me,

Fine Lady, were you lost utterly.

How could I lose her

Replace her ever

Any fine Lady, before I had her?

No beloved or lover

Is just a dreamer;

When he's a lover, no more a suitor,

He has accrued a signal honour,

A sweet glance produces such colours;

Yet I here

Have never

Held you naked, nor any other;

Longed for,

Lived for,

You without pay, I have though, forever.

I'd be sadder

Should we part ever,

Sorrowful, my Beautiful Warrior,

For my heart never

Seems to deliver

Me from desire

Nor slakes it further;

Gives pleasure only to the slanderer

He, my lady, who finds no other

Joy, the man there

Who'd feel my utter

Loss, and thanks would offer,

And consider

Insolent starer

You, the one from whom I suffer.

Flowers so kindly,

Over all brightly,

Noble Beatrice, and grows so sweetly

Your Honour to me;

For as I see,

Value adorns your sovereignty,

And, to be sure, the sweetest speech;

Of gracious deeds you are the seed;

Verity,

Mercy,

You have: and great learning truly;

Bravery

Plainly,

Decked, with your generosity.

Lady so graced,

All acclaimed and have praised

Your worth with pleasure freighted;

Who forgets, instead,

May as well be dead,

I adore, you, the ever-exalted;

Since you have the kindest head,

And are best, and the worthiest bred,

I've flattered

I've served

More truly than Erec Enida.

Words are fled,

All is said,

Sweet Engles - my estampida.

Notes: The Calends, Latin Kalendae, corresponded to the first days of each month of the Roman calendar, signifying the start of the new moon cycle. The troubadours' spring celebrations of kalenda maia and their courtly worship of 'the lady' probably drew on remnants of pre-Christian worship. Pound mentions Kalenda Maya in Canto CXIII.

Engles is Boniface Marquess of Montferrat (c1150-1207), leader of the Fourth Crusade, called here Engles, the 'Englishman', for some unknown reason. His eldest daughter was Biatrix.

Beatrice here is probably Boniface's daughter Biatrix. The vida claims that Raimbaut spied on Beatrice in her shift practising with her husband's sword, after which he called her his Bel Cavalier.
Erec et Enide is Chretien de Troyes' first romance, completed around 1170 and the earliest known Arthurian work in Old French. It tells the tale of Erec, one of Arthur's knights, and the conflict between love and knighthood he experiences in his marriage to Enide.

The Estampida, a medieval dance and musical form called the estampie in French, and istampitta (also istanpitta or stampita) in Italian was a popular instrumental style of the 13th and 14th centuries. The earliest reported example of the musical form is this song Kalenda Maya, supposedly written to the melody of an estampida played by French jongleurs. All other known examples are purely instrumental pieces.

Guillem de Cabestan (1162-1212)

A Catalan from Capestany in the County of Roussillon, his name in Occitan is Guilhem de Cabestaing, Cabestang, Cabestan, or Cabestanh. According to his legendary vida, he was the lover of Seremonda, or Soremonda, wife of Raimon of Castel Rossillon. Raimon killed Cabestan, and fed the lover's heart to her without her knowledge. On discovering what she had eaten, she threw herself from a window to her death. The legend appears later in Boccaccio's Decameron.

"It is Cabestan's heart in the dish! "

Ezra Pound - Canto IV
Aissi cum selh que baissa? l fuelh

Like to him who bends the leaves

And picks the loveliest flower of all

I from the highest branch have seized,

Of them, the one most beautiful,

One God has made, without a stain,

Made her out of His own beauty,

And He commanded that humility

Should her great worth grace again.

With her sweet glance, her gentle eyes

She made true joyous lover of me,

And the love whose pain applies

Heart's tears to my complexion, see,

I have never sought to explain;

But now I'll sing of her freely,

From whom is born such beauty

For I've not shown her plain.

I won't speak common boasts or praise,

But truth, with a thousand witnesses,

Let all desire what I wish always,

The lance of love for the joyous

That wounds the unprotected heart

With friendship's pleasant pleasing;

Yet I have felt such blow's assailing,

That from the deepest sleep I start.

Let her then show me mercy

And welcome, despite her grandeur,

Let me reveal the ill that pains me,

And how she adds to my dolour,

Into my heart now drives it further:

Love and sadness she grants to me,

For love of her, the best you'll see

From Le Puy down to Lleida.