There are a few songs dating from about 1300, and mostly found in a
single collection (Harl. MS., 2253), which are almost the only English
verse before Chaucer that has any sweetness to a modern ear. They are
written in French strophic forms in the southern dialect, and sometimes
have an intermixture of French and Latin lines. They are musical, fresh,
simple, and many of them very pretty. They celebrate the gladness of
spring with its cuckoos and throstle-cocks, its daisies and woodruff.
[Footnote 1: Hue.]
[Footnote 2: Those.]
[Footnote 3: Realm.]
[Footnote 4: Bowstring.]
When the nightingale sings the woodes waxen green;
Leaf and grass and blossom spring in Averil, I ween,
And love is to my herte gone with a spear so keen,
Night and day my blood it drinks, my herte doth me tene.[5]
Others are love plaints to "Alysoun" or some other lady whose "name is
in a note of the nightingale;" whose eyes are as gray as glass, and her
skin as "red as rose on ris." [6] Some employ a burden or refrain.
Blow, northern wind,
Blow thou me my sweeting,
Blow, northern wind, blow, blow, blow!
Others are touched with a light melancholy at the coming of winter.
Winter wakeneth all my care
Now these leaves waxeth bare,
Oft I sigh and mourne sare
When it cometh in my thought
Of this worldes joy, how it goeth all to nought.
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