University of Virginia Library

TOURNESOL.

GEOFFREY of Rudel! How the name
Leaps to the lips like a flower of flame,
Holding the heart with a dream of days
When life lay yet in the flowered ways
And the winds of the world were stirred and strong
With blast of battle and silver of song;
When love was long and women were true
And the bell of the steadfast sky was blue
Over a world that was white as yet
From load of labour and fruitless fret
Of hunger for gain and greed of gold,
That now have made us our young world old!
I hail thee, honest and tender time!
I, last of many, that with rude rhyme
Ring out reproach to the cheerless air
And chide the age that it is not fair.
And first of any the blames I bring,
I chide it for lack of love-liking,
For fall of faith and hope grown cold,
For love turned lusting and youth grown old.
For where, I pray you, in this our day
Lives there the lover that loves alway
And where is the lady whose constant eye
Shall seek one only until she die?
Alack for Rudel and Carmosine,
Whose loves, as the constant sun his sheen,
Burn like a beryl in lays of yore!
Their day is dead as the bale they bore
For faithful fancy; and now alone
In minstrels' making their name is known.
Their thought is perished, their peerless fame
Faded and past as the marish flame
That flees from the blink of the breaking day;
And love is dead with them, wellaway!
For now men's love is a fitful fire,
A wayless desert of waste desire;
And women's love is a cold caprice,
A wind that changes without surcease.
For the lifelong love that in days of old
Was dearer than lands and grain and gold,
The love that possessed men's heart and soul
In life and leisure, in death and dole,
That stirred their spirits to many a deed
Of noble daring, that was the meed
Of haughty honour and high emprize,
That made men look in their lady's eyes
For gain and guerdon of all their strife,
This love lack we in our modern life.
For the folk through the fretful hours are hurled
On the ruthless rush of the wondrous world
And none has leisure to lie and cull
The blossoms that made life beautiful
In that old season when men could sing
For dear delight in the risen Spring
And Summer ripening fruit and flower.
Now carefulness cankers every hour;
We are too weary and sad to sing;
Our pastime's poisoned with thought-taking.
The bloom is faded from all that's fair
And grey with smoke is the grievous air.
None lifts to luting his hand and voice
Nor smites the strings with a joyful noise;
For all who sing in the land are pale;
Their voice is the voice of those that wail
For beauty buried and hang the head
For the dream of a day evanishèd.
How shall we say sweet things in rhyme
Of this our marvellous modern time,
We that are heavy at heart to sing,
But may not rejoice for remembering?
We care not, we, for the gorgeous glow
Of wealth and wonder, the stately show
Of light and luxury, that sweeps past,
Unheeded, before our eyes downcast.
The pageant of passion and pride and crime,
That fills the face of the turncoat time,
The gold that glitters, the gems that glow,
Hide not from us the wasting woe
That gnaws at the heart of the hungry age.
The starving soul in the crystal cage
Looks through the loop of the blazoned bars,
As out of heaven the sorrowing stars
Gaze on the grief of the night newborn.
What shall we do for the world forlorn,
We that drink deep of its sorrowing?
What can we do, alas! but sing?
Sing as the bird behind the wire,
That pours out his passion of dear desire,
His fret for the forest far away,
His hunger of hope for the distant day
When peradventure shall ope for him
The door that darkens on heaven's rim;
What can we do, bird-like, but pour
Into our singing the dreams of yore,
The long desire of the soul exiled
From some sweet Eden laid waste and wild?
And if, by fortune, we turn our feet,
Torn with long travel, toward that sweet,
That happy haven of “long ago”
And tune our lutany soft and low
To some dear ditty of things that were,
Memoried with melodies faint and fair,
Shall any blame us for this that we
Fordid Time's tyranny and forgot
Awhile life's lovelessness? I trow not;
For song is sinless and fancy free.