Читать книгу History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to Swinburne - Andrew Lang, Robert Kirk - Страница 39

Far more interesting than these things, whether moral or religious, are the rhyming songs, the voice of the English people, laymen, not priests, the love lyrics (1300?), for example, one on Alison, beginning

Bytuene Mershe ant Averil

When spray biginneth to springe,

The lutel fowl hath hire wyll

On hyre lud to synge,

each stanza ending

From alle wymen mi loue is lent

Ant lyht on Alisoun.

This is the first sweet English love-song that has escaped the ruins of time. Everyone knows by heart

Sumer is icumen in;

and

Blow, northerne wynd,

Send thou me my suetyng,

reminds us of

O gentle wind that bloweth south

From where my love repaireth.

There were all the sounds and scents of spring in the hearts and songs of the poets:—

Lenten is come with love to toune,

With blosmen ant with briddes roune,

That all this blisse bryngeth.

This metre came to be used in telling stories in verse, a purpose for which it is not well fitted. But truly English poetry, with rich re-echoing rhymes and many forms of verse, is awake at last.