Andr Le Chapelain.

(Clerk of Love, 1170.) His Plaint To Venus Of The Coming Years.     "Plus ne suis ce que j'ay est     Et ne le saurois jamais estre;     Mon beau printemps et mon est     Ont fait le saut par la fenestre."     Queen Venus, round whose feet,     To tend thy sacred fire,     With service bitter-sweet     Nor youths nor maidens tire;--     Goddess, whose bounties be     Large as the un-oared sea;--     Mother, whose eldest born     First stirred his stammering tongue,     In the world's youngest morn,     When the first daisies sprung:--     Whose last, when Time shall die,     In the same grave shall lie:--     Hear thou one suppliant more!     Must I, thy Bard, grow old,     Bent, with the temples frore,     Not jocund be nor bold,     To tune for folk in May     Ballad and virelay?     Shall the youths jeer and jape,     "Behold his verse doth dote,--     Leave thou Love's lute to scrape,     And tune thy wrinkled throat     To songs of 'Flesh is Grass,'"--     Shall they cry thus and pass?     And the sweet girls go by?     "Beshrew the grey-beard's tune!--     What ails his minstrelsy     To sing us snow in June!"     Shall they too laugh, and fleet     Far in the sun-warmed street?     But Thou, whose beauty bright,     Upon thy wooded hill,     With ineffectual light     The wan sun seeketh still;--     Woman, whose tears are dried,     Hardly, for Adon's side,--     Have pity, Erycine!     Withhold not all thy sweets;     Must I thy gifts resign     For Love's mere broken meats;     And suit for alms prefer     That was thine Almoner?     Must I, as bondsman, kneel     That, in full many a cause,     Have scrolled thy just appeal?     Have I not writ thy Laws?     That none from Love shall take     Save but for Love's sweet sake;--     That none shall aught refuse     To Love of Love's fair dues;--     That none dear Love shall scoff     Or deem foul shame thereof;--     That none shall traitor be     To Love's own secrecy;--     Avert,--avert it, Queen!     Debarred thy listed sports,     Let me at least be seen     An usher in thy courts,     Outworn, but still indued     With badge of servitude.     When I no more may go,     As one who treads on air,     To string-notes soft and slow,     By maids found sweet and fair--     When I no more may be     Of Love's blithe company;--     When I no more may sit     Within thine own pleasnce,     To weave, in sentence fit,     Thy golden dalliance;     When other hands than these     Record thy soft decrees;--     Leave me at least to sing     About thine outer wall,     To tell thy pleasuring,     Thy mirth, thy festival;     Yea, let my swan-song be     Thy grace, thy sanctity.     [Here ended Andr's words:     But One that writeth, saith--     Betwixt his stricken chords     He heard the Wheels of Death;     And knew the fruits Love bare     But Dead-Sea apples were.]