POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
and Limoges. I must leave the philologists and professional tacticians to decide whether Bertrans's proclivities for stirring up the barons were due to his liver or to "military necessity." When he did not keep them busy fighting each other they most certainly did close in upon him—at least once.
The traditional scene of Bertrans before King Henry Plantagenet is well recounted in Smith's Troubadaurs at Home. It is vouched for by many old manuscripts and seems as well authenticated as most Provençal history though naturally there are found the usual perpetrators of "historic doubt." I can not develop the matter in the foregoing poem, as it would overbalance the rest of the matter set forth and is extraneous to my main theme.
If my hasty allusion to the scene of de Born and King Henry is obscure, I can only reply that Heine has made an equally erudite allusion. His poem, in the Neue Gedichte, entitled Bertrand de Born, is as follows:
Em edler Stola in allen Zügen,
Auf seiner Stirn Gedankenspur.
Er konnte jedes Hen besiegen,
Bertrand de Born, der Troubadour.
Es kirrten seine süseen Töne
Die Löwin des Plantagenet's;
Die Tochter auch, die beiden Söhne,
Er fang sie alle in sein Netz.
Wit er den Vater selbst bethörte
In Thränen schmolz des Königs Zorn,
Als er ihn lieblich reden hörte,
Den Troubadour, Bertrand de Born.
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