Des mouschettes et papillons
Ilz avoient pris leur pasture.
Lasniers, aoutours, esmerillons
Vy, et mouches aux aguillons,
Qui de beau miel paveillons
Firent aux arbres par mesure.
De l’autre part fut la closture
D’ung pré gracieuz, ou nature
Sema les fleurs sur la verdure,
Blanches, jaunes, rouges et perses.
D’arbres flouriz fut la ceinture,
Aussi blancs que se neige pure
Les couvroit, ce sembloit paincture,
Tant y eut de couleurs diverses.”[1]
A brook brawls over pebbles, fishes swim in it, a grove spreads its twigs on the bank, forming a green curtain. And then the birds reappear: ducks, turtle-doves, pheasants and herons; all the birds from here to Babylon, as Villon would say.
The artist and the poet, both striving to render the beauty of nature, both dominated by the tendency to fasten on each detail, nevertheless arrive, because of the diversity of their methods, at a very different result. Unity and simplicity in the picture, in spite of the mass of details, monotony and formlessness in the poem.
But are we right in comparing poetry with painting, with respect to expressive power? Should we not rather take prose, less tied down to obligatory motifs, freer in its choice of means to give an exact vision of reality?
One of the fundamental traits of the mind of the declining Middle Ages is the predominance of the sense of sight, a predominance which is closely connected with the atrophy of
- ↑ I saw the trees blossom, And hares and rabbits run. Everything rejoiced at the spring. Love seemed to hold sway there. None could age or die, It seemed to me, so long as he was there. From the herbs arose a sweet smell, Which the clear air made sweeter still, And purling through the valley A little brook passed Moistening the lands Of which the water was not salt. There drank the little birds After they had fed upon crickets, Little flies and butterflies. I saw there lanners, hawks and merlins, And flies with a sting (wasps) Who made pavilions of fine honey In the trees by measure. In another part was the enclosure Of a charming meadow, where nature Strewed flowers on the verdure White, yellow, red and violet. It was encircled by blossoming trees As white as if pure snow Covered them, it looked like a painting, So many various colours there were.
