To May, the Prince of Months
by Eustache Deschamps (1346–1406),
translated from French by Margaret Coats
Noble month, father to Zephyr balmy,
Brother to Pallas, Juno’s uncle―and lo,
Kissing cousin caught by Venus’ beauty,
Unnumbered sons and daughters you can show.
Through love you make new leaves and flowers grow,
Festoon the forest in a robe of verdure,
Embellishing the earth with grassy glow.
I frolic in these pleasures of all nature!
Auspicious May, to you I kneel sincerely;
My heart and body to your warmth I owe.
The amatory virtues are your bounty,
And with them, ready comfort do I know,
That other men in other months forego.
Your sunny weather animates each creature,
And all rejoice in gifts that from you flow.
I frolic in these pleasures of all nature!
Folk lightly clothed cavort, no longer chilly;
The sick and weak, whom winter had laid low,
Rise up from bed in health again, and sprightly;
You cheer the old, whose arms and legs moved slow
In stiffness sore, for everywhere you go
Fresh curatives leap forth from farm and pasture.
Both man and beast feed on the bliss you sow;
I frolic in these pleasures of all nature!
You charm us! Young, mature, and elderly
Sing welcome in arrangements apropos;
You teach love’s courtesies to lords and lowly,
While birds by your sweet whispering foreknow
Whether to coo or chirp fortissimo,
And how to soften new-built nests’ enclosure
For squawking chicks. Such vigor you bestow;
I frolic in these pleasures of all nature!
The world, by your fine flair sustained, lives gaily,
And all things come to birth; you order so,
While many you prepare for future glory.
Give me your tender care from head to toe;
My fortune freely at your feet I throw
This holy day, and ask you for the nurture
Of kindly airs that in your breezes blow.
I frolic in these pleasures of all nature!
Prince of months, dressed splendidly and carefree,
Most beautiful, proverbially merry,
Whom courtly monarchs honor without measure,
Accept me for your service mild but manly,
Where laughing labor renders workers wealthy;
I frolic in these pleasures of all nature!
Translator’s Note: Family relationships mentioned in the first lines absurdly contradict classic myth, showing that the author playfully claims for May not only fair weather (Zephyr the west wind), but also an alliance with wisdom (Pallas Athena), majesty (Juno), and love (Venus).
French Original
O nobles mois, peres de Zephirus,
Oncles Juno et frere de Pallas,
Cousins germains la dieuesse Venus
Qui tant de filz et tant de filles as,
Tu es premiers qui par amours amas
Et qui au bois donnas toute verdure,
Feuilles et flours, et la terre honouras:
Amer te doit pour ce toute nature.
O tresdoulz may, a genoiz te salus,
Mon cuer te doing e tout mon corps aras,
Car en toy sont trestoutes les vertus
Amoureuses; en toy n’a que soulas;
Es autremoys dissent aucuns: hélas!
Par leur durté: mais toute creature
Prant reconfort ou temps que tu donnas:
Amer te doit pour ce toute nature.
Tu faiz aler sanz froidure les nus,
Les malhetiez de l’iver respassas,
Et les gouteus as tu remis dessus,
Les mehaingniez de jambes et de bras:
Tuit sont gari, et par tout ou tu vas
Bestes et gens pais de douce pasture
Et a tousjours leesce leur donnas.
Amer te doit pour ce toute nature.
Tu rejouis vieulz, jeunes et chanus;
A ton venir t’encline chascuns bas;
Tu fais amer granz, riches et menus,
Bestes, oiseauls sont tuit prins en tes las;
D’eulx conjoir, de nigier ne sont las,
De faire fruit chascun a sa droiture,
De hault chanter tel pouoir leur baillas:
Amer te doit pour ce toute nature.
Par ton fait est li mondes soustenus,
Tout naist par toy, qui ainsi l’ordonnas,
Et de toy sont maint grant peuple venus;
Chascun te suit et te quiert pas pour pas.
A toy me rens, ne me refuse pas;
A ton saint jour me donne nourreture
De douce amour, dont tu es advocas:
Amer te doit pour ce toute nature.
Princes de moys, li plus gais, li plus drus,
Li plus joli et li plus chiers tenus,
A qui tous roys font honeur sanz mesure,
Je te suppli que soie retenus;
Pouoir en as, de touz es vrais escus:
Amer te doit pour ce toute nature.
Margaret Coats lives in California. She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University. She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable work in homeschooling for her own family and others.
This is very beautiful, Margaret C., and it brings to mind the wisteria and jacaranda blossoms that greet me on my neighborhood walks in the month of May.
from Margaret B.
Thanks, Margaret B! Wisteria and jacaranda make splendid robes for the beautiful and merry month of may. Hope your walks are full of carefree Nature’s pleasures.
Margaret, your translation talents are amazing. Your manipulation of each line is masterful to achieve such effective rhymes in English while maintaining the fidelity and integrity of the original French. As one who once translated in various languages (not French), you have composed a beautiful translation. I can only imagine how you find such ancient poems in the first place and then decide to translate them as gifts over the centuries to us.
Thank you, Roy. I appreciate this compliment from you as one much experienced in practical translation. The masculine rhymes in /o/ hold this piece together, while alternating feminine rhymes rely rather on similar sounds of words with the same rhythm. Glad you approve! I’ve found many, many such beautiful poems by browsing in libraries and identifying favorite authors who provide them. Eustache Deschamps made magnificent gifts to French poetry that deserve to be heard in English, too!
A very nice rendering of Eustache, and one that must have taken a great deal of work to maintain the rhyme scheme. Yes, there are contradictions of the ancient myths, but the medievals could be somewhat cavalier in that way. In any case, in a poem one is not obliged to be absolutely true or accurate with the material that one borrows.
Thanks, Joseph. Since rhyme sounds should remain the same in every stanza, and there are four or five stanzas in a chant royal, it takes some work to maintain that original rhyme scheme. I have been playful with the rhyme scheme here, just as Eustache is about the relationships between May and myth. The fun suits the season!
So beautiful! I was enjoying all of your wonderful slant rhymes for “nature”, and then saw that those in the first three verses are the same as in the original, matched verse for verse, which is delightful! You’ve also matched the rhyme scheme. My favorite part is about the birds knowing whether to coo or chirp fortissimo. Thank you for this May classic.
Thank you, Cynthia! Glad to know you see this medieval French poem as a delightful “May classic.” There are so many such poems in both English and French. I’m happy (or indeed “merry”) to bring another one to attention. And very much pleased that you like my Italian musical “fortissimo” as the strong option for May birdsong.
Dear Margaret this is a beautiful poem that captures the essence of the month of May.
In is such a heart warming description of this time of year and since we have had exceptionally good weather
here in the UK so far we are in a better position to agree with every sentiment.
This poem really captures the magic of this time of year and I really enjoyed reading it more than once. thank you .
Thanks so much, Maria. Reading more than once, for the heart-warming magic of this time of year! I couldn’t ask for better response from a reader, but you have done more, by taking time and making the effort to let me know the effect.
I particularly enjoyed the references to the old and sick being rejuvenated/resuscitated by May after the rigours of winter. To be old or infirm and having to live through a medieval winter in northern Europe must have been an ordeal.
Thanks for a fine read.
Yes, Paul, that is one of the cheeriest things about spring. Even today, it’s a pleasure to watch the elderly enjoy May flowers while sitting outside in sunny weather. Thinking of medieval winter life implies the dismal contrast of long suffering through piercing cold just to maintain sufficient body warmth. Glad for our indoor heating, and still more for the joyful May atmosphere outside!
Lovely language. I especially enjoy “Festoon the forest”, “grassy glow”, “amatory virtues”, “coo or chirp”.
Thanks, Cheryl. The French poem presents what we might call “lovely language of the month” to inspire me as translator to find it in English.
Lo, show, grow, glow, owe, know, forego, show, low, show, go, slow, apropos, foreknow, fortissimo, bestow, so, toe, throw, blow.
Two phases come to mind when I consider the challenge this translation effort faced given the functional vocabulary required to match the rhyme-scheme embedded in the French-language poem.
The first phrase is that coined by Winston Churchill in his description of Soviet geopolitics as being “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. The internet states that this famous phrase is often used in reference to “an intricately layered puzzle.” Which is exactly what you faced in unraveling the French original and reassembling in your English translation.
The second phrase that comes to mind (in light of the first) is “tour de force.” An acknowledgment of your skill; an accolade that is, appropriately, in French.
Margaret, in short, you continue to amaze.
Many, many thanks, James. Translation is well described as a matter of unraveling and reassembling–while remembering to bring every image and idea to a fitting place in the new English poem. It may be a “tour de force,” but the force is best applied gently. I have a great master to appreciate and to follow in Eustache Deschamps. He must have had a birthday in May!
This is a skilful translation, Margaret. It incorporates (and thereby pays homage to) two characteristics of poetry of this era: first, the use of Simpsonian rhyme (in English-language poetry); and second, a certain kind of vowel elision found in Romance-language poetry. In the second line, the words “uncle” and “and” are elided to make the line read as pentameter; this might seem counterintuitive given the presence of a dash between them, yet elision was implied in such cases in the works of Tasso, for example.
Yes, Daniel, those masters of Romance language poetry never tire me. I’m delighted that you find I’m able to incorporate their artistic characteristics. It has to be done, I think, through easy familiarity. Hope you are able to duly value their beauties as your own work proceeds. I apologize for leaving your comments so long unacknowledged, but I have been thoroughly enjoying a vacation. Also hope you come back here and explain what Simpsonian rhyme may be. The term is strange! Thanks very much, nonetheless, for your thoughtful appreciation.
In ‘English Literature in the Sixteenth Century’, C.S. Lewis defined Simpsonian rhyme as “a rhyme on the second syllable of a disyllabic word where metre forbids that syllable to carry the stress.” An example would be to rhyme “hid” with “Cupid”. He called this ‘Simpsonian A’.
‘Simpsonian B’ is where two unstressed syllables are rhymed, as in “lady” and “hungry”.
On page 479 Lewis expressed his surprise at the use of Simpsonian rhyme by the best of the Elizabthan poets as follows:
“If only bad poets used it we could attribute it to incompetence, but it is used by Lodge, Shakespeare, and (excessively) by Chapman. We may indeed suppose that stress was a little less tyrannous, and the rights of unstressed syllables a little more respected, in Elizabethan than in modern English, but the greatest allowance we can make for such a change hardly explains the phenomenon.”
Thanks for explaining, Daniel. I’d forgotten the name, but certainly not the usage by poets of the sixteenth century, including the very best of them. Their practice needs greater acknowledgment, as it could help soften unnecessary rigidity that sometimes shows up today. I’ve recently had discussions about where stress should be assigned in contemporary poetry; this concern is all the more important for formal poets because we are surrounded by free verse that tends to ignore the question. I let the chosen meter decide on stress placement within a line, but do NOT insist that every stress be equal. This corresponds to natural speech, where word accents are almost never equally stressed by a speaker paying attention to feeling and meaning of the sentence. And being less rigid justifies my occasional use of Simpsonian B rhyme, where the syllable count goes far to make theoretically imperfect rhymes acceptable. I find they go unnoticed in effective recitation!
Daniel, you’re right again in the comment below, about avoiding practices that make a translation less comfortable for the readers likely to receive it. Keats may have been fascinated with Chapman’s Homer, but Keats lived a long time ago, and Chapman did his work much earlier. We still appreciate Keats’s sonnet for telling poetically what transcendence can emerge from a translation, but no one today picks up Chapman’s 1615 translation if he can have Michael Solot ease him into the Odyssey.
Thus I translate for myself and my contemporaries, hoping for clarity enough that the work may be beautiful in itself, and remain readable at least for a while. Rhyme words need to be somewhat close in sound, but I find it’s usually more important that the rhythm suit the integrity of the line, by matching the expected rhythm–and rhymes that are technically imperfect often do this well.
Some English poets from the time of Henry Howard put the stress at the end of French words like ‘nature’ and ‘verdure’ when incorporating them into English, thereby allowing for a perfect rhyme. The most recent translator I can think of to employ such an antiquated device was Sir Richard Francis Burton in his 19th-century translation of Camoes’ Lusiads. But that device has not, in my view, stood the test of time very well, and you were right to avoid it.
Burton wrote an interesting preface either to the Lusiades or Camoes’ lyrics suggesting that the ‘Englishing’ of any works written prior to Shakespeare should be executed in a pre-Shakespearean idiom in order to communicate the work’s distance from us. While that is an interesting thought, it did have the effect of making his translations of Camoes’ works ‘unreadable’, as one of his biographers put it.
Daniel, this same idea (of using a deliberately antiquated English when translating very old texts) was held by the editors of the Loeb Classics translation series of Greek and Roman authors. Loeb translations were standard aids for young students of Greek and Latin, but the language was so offputting and mannered that they seemed like a joke at times. Decades later, the Loeb people eased up on this absurdity, and a number of the more bizarre renderings into fake Elizabethan English were replaced by ones in contemporary English.
Loeb also had the bad habit of trying to preserve the flavor of certain Greek dialects that were associated with bucolic and pastoral poetry by translating those dialects into a truly artificial and antique “rustic” English — something that sounded like a bad imitation of Spenser’s “The Shepherds’ Calendar.”
I have some of those older Loeb Classics, which remain useful when there is no other translation easily available. Or worth buying when the reader is no longer a student. They can sound like jokes, but as long as I don’t blame the original author for it, the mistaken intention is instructive.
Margaret,
Your translation is very nice and, in my opinion, maintains the sense of what I imagine the original intends. Lovely.
Glad you like it, Laura. Please accept my thanks for commenting with good wishes for us both in June.