Longchamp's Soliloquy

Napoliyun du Longchamp

LONGCHAMP

It is among the animals and plants

Upon the Earth, and dirt and pestilence;

And pestilent doth make the men who on

The land do longwise gashes meant to make.

Behind the ox, ten grooves each Spring, for far-

ther than the grooves an ox cannot his plough

To goodly bring. And rather he, the far-

mer, then play bones with Fate for fate of ox

And for his fam'ly's weal doth make, he stops

The ox, and pauses, in fair sunshine or foul rain,

And turns the beast about and then they

Do depart again.

                         Ten times in one arpent,

The grooves within his Mother Earth dost Ev'-

ry peasant make; ten rows for planting, and

Then do his fam'ly members tuck the seeds

And under do they go.

                                  The seeds to sleep,

And in so slumbering, push do they

With fingers down, and touch the thing which gives

Us gain within The hallowed Globe there what's

beneath this place.

                             And after three-score years,

The man doth follow aft the oxen and

Make grooves, and plant the seeds, and then repeat

It, does he pass to sweet relief, and ne'er

Has he re-act the dreary thing. Adieu!

LONGCHAMP

The second of the three, mark: You,

Dear Nesta, as the world can plainly see,

Have done the second part of this, the sal-

ly from the part beginning, and ye to

The part which endeth all.

                                                  This part, I mean

To say, is that of steel and ringèd iron,

Aback of horses, bred to carry us

To valor; and then to our end. Take up

A banner, Nesta! That, though you high

-Born, and you ver’ly clever, have ye but

A single choice if ye intend to leave

To fated History your voice, like eld the sa-

gas of our ancestors did do.

                                                      It is

By sword, and not as other chance for you,

By cursèd cloth. The crown comes hard upon

The head of those do win it from a low-

ly state, but stowed with strain it comes by those

Betray the cornerstone of rulership:

Nobility. Ye noble or a beggar, Nesta dam?

Methinks the former-

NESTA

                                          -And you’d better!

LONGCHAMP

                                                                              Third.

The third life’s path that Man can take, in this

Time through the dreary-vast, is by the cloth,

And pray for those whose souls would otherwise

Be lost. A life perhaps the better than

The one of many peasants, but still on

the narr’ and rapid straits to sluggish mis-

ery, inferior to those high-ups

Above the salt in Mother Church it be.

I did’st know a man who, rather let

He let his passion run amok, and make

For trouble infangthief and honor lost

Without, did still ensconce himself within

The sill and cloister of a monastery

On a hill, and ne’er did he r’appear.

For six and thirty years, an elder man,

His passion spent. And had he spent those years

In earnest passion for repent. Repent

-eth for me too, this man did do. Wore he

The sackcloth and applied the ashes too,

And he did nary speak to anyone

Unless good custom did it shew to them.

But naught he taketh feast on sumptuare,

Nor use he excess flavorments, nor salt.

But naught he take in recess with the men

At sport and play within the common room

Or court. But naught did he raise up his voice

In happy-frain, but only with the dirge,

His voice uplift remain.

And all this did

He do, give he his life to God anew,

and never misery eschew, for his

Bald passion other might endanger vir

-tue, reputation, of his fam and hearth!

So which be worse, the worsening of life

For virtue, or the missing man, nay, lad,

From family a-gathered round their perch

A-dreadful mourning he who lives but from

Them separates, for honor due?

In mine own case, did I put in the ground

Each of my sisters, young and eld, and two

My goodly brothers, they both eld of me,

And mother and my pa. Each did I give

A plot from our inheritance, in kind

For each the other, side-by-side, as life

They passionate would be, sleep in sleepy

sap-André’s fair Val aux Clercs stone chap-

elry.

          With windows made for they of paint-ed

glass, installed so that their mornings and

Their eventides are pretty, like shewed in

Our vineyard that they knew’d in times long past.

But for my passionate dear sir, his name

Roosts, stayeth sacrèd in me now, for now

I wish not his pellation say, and so

Dishonor lineage and hearth he wished

To hide it from, I do so keep it near

To me in all our years apart, and nar

Did he escape from this, my sacrèd

for him heart.

And those three are the thrace good pathways three

To sweet oblivion, oublitted every

Man in History, but precious few.

And though the sainted Church and St. Marié

Just down the lane a ways, I have to been good

To patron for the years, and done

My works and days for Her, I can’t abide

A God who would’st call what we had shared

‘Abomination,’ and did cleave him from

His good vocation and from mine, the flow-

er of our youth, sublime, and dwellest there

In cloister nary-fair, a vulture under

Roost.