244 CHAUCER. 



merely changing the original assonance into rhyme. 

 Eremborc, to save the son of her liege-lord, has passed- 

 off her own child for his, only stipulating that he shall 

 pass the night before his death with her in the prison 

 where she is confined by the usurper Fromond. The 

 time is just as the dreaded dawn begins to break. 



" ' Gamier, fair son,' the noble lady said, 

 'To save thy father's life must thou be dead; 

 And mine, alas, must be with sorrow spent, 

 Since thou must die, albeit so innocent! 

 Evening thou shalt not see that see'st the morn! 

 Woe worth the hour that I beheld thee born, 

 Whom nine long months within my side I bore! 

 Was never babe desired so much before. 

 Now summer will the pleasant days recall 

 When I shall take my stand upon the wall 

 And see the fair young gentlemen thy peers 

 That come and go, and, as beseems their years 

 Run at the quintain, strive to pierce the shield, 

 And in the tourney keep their sell or yield; 

 Then must my heart be tearswoln for thy sake 

 That 't will be marvel if it do not break.' 

 At morning, when the day began to peer, 

 Matins rang out from minsters far and near, 

 And the clerks sang full well with voices high. 

 ' God,' said the dame, ' thou glorious in the sky, 

 These lingering nights were wont to tire me so! 

 And this, alas, how swift it hastes to go ! 

 These clerks and cloistered folk, alas, in spite 

 So early sing to cheat me of my night! ' " 



The great advantages which the langue d'oil had over 

 its sister dialect of the South of France were its wider 

 distribution, and its representing the national and unitary 

 tendencies of the people as opposed to those of provin 

 cial isolation. But the Trouveres had also this superi 

 ority, that they gave a voice to real and not merely 

 conventional emotions. In comparison with the Trou 

 badours their sympathies were more human, and their 

 expression more popular. While the tiresome ingenuity 

 of the latter busied itself chiefly in the filigree of wire- 



