Early Dutch Poetry and Other Verse

Peter Morris

Description

This small book contains an engaging spread of rhymes and poems; humorous, romantic or based around historical events.The opening twenty-eight translations of early Dutch poetry are the most well-known of that language and period. The originals were written in a straightforward and unembellished style, making attractive yet metred translation not too tricky.The fourteen Norwegian pieces are from the nineteenth century. Their Lutheran adumbrations and often rural or unsophisticated settings, present thornier subjects to capture or epitomise.Lastly are a number of youthful ditties by the author.

Informations

• Publié par: Brown Dog Books
• Date de parution: 18 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839522727
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published 2021
Copyright © Peter Morris 2021
The right of Peter Morris to be identified as the author/translator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership, 7 Green Park Station, Bath BA1 1JB
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk

ISBN printed book: 978-1-83952-271-0 ISBN e-book: 978-1-83952-272-7
Cover design by Kevin Rylands Internal design by Andrew Easton
Printed and bound in the UK
This book is printed on FSC certified paper
To Lucy and Titus
Contents
Introduction
Early Dutch Poems
The Discovery.
The Song of Halowyn.
Castigatio.
Sonnet.
Wild am i within.
O Little Lark.
Epitaph.
Farewell.
Carol.
The Bad and The Good.
My Little Flower.
Epitaph.
On Love.
A Little Love Song.
Conversation.
Fortune.
Love-Song.
Shocks to the Dead.
First Light.
My Portrait.
Love and Death.
O Joy and Virtue.
O Grecian Maid!
Mary’s Lament Beneath The Cross.
Our Orphanage.
Amsteldam.
Shocks to the Living.
Orange Blossom.
Norwegian Verse
Two Fiddlers.
The Learned.
A Nursery Rhyme.
Hidden Love.
Love your Neighbour.
Burnt Boats.
The Hare and The Fox.
Aurora.
Synnøve’s Song.
My Scrap-Book.
So Passing Fair.
Just as I Extolled your Life.
A Thought.
Are you Fond of Me?
My Early Ditties
Owed to a Grecian Ern’.
The Manor.
The Banquet.
The Soubrette.
Old Waggonways.
The Bacchante.
The Cage.
Mary.
The Deity of the Adit.
Selfish Susan.
A Sicilian Holiday.
The Druidess’s Spell.
The Narcissists.
Old Hat.
The Rhymester.
Ballad.
Deposed Ephors.
A Sudden Obsession.
The Loner in Class.
The Counterfeit.
The Misfit.
Sonnet.
The Red Guard.
The Waste-Land Mire.
An Unruly Circassian.
All is Delightful.
The Contest.
Just Good Friends.
The Shieling.
INTRODUCTION
The first twenty-eight verses here, I translated whilst working in Holland in 1979. Starting in the thirteenth century with the Lady Hadewijch – who wrote in the Brabantian dialect of Middle Dutch – they end in the first half of the seventeenth century with the poets of the Dutch ‘Golden Age’.
The fourteen more colloquial and mostly nineteenth-century Norwegian idylls were coerced – with less facility I confess – into English, in Drammen in 1981.
As a sotto voce encore, are a sprinkling of my own earlier jingles from the sixties and seventies.
P.M. January 2021
EARLY DUTCH POEMS

The Discovery.
Roemer Visscher: 1547–1620.

I quarrel with no one yet I know no peace,
I hope, I fear, I mope, I roar.
I lay on the ground and my spirit release,
To heaven in dreams I watch him soar.
My senses are frivolous and cannot rest
Or concentrate on work or thought,
And yet are anchored in that breast
Or her whose reckoning counts me nought.
She will not have me, yet I feel
So firmly to her nature bound.
To all and sundry I appeal
For help, though none be ever found.
I have no tongue, my eye complains,
And downcast sees in nought delight.
I want to laugh but grief remains,
I sleep by day and walk by night.
The guide of common-sense, with me no time employs,
And life and death of equal weight are shown –
Now what a wonder that all these joys,
Should spring from love alone!

The Song of Halowyn.
Anon: 14th century.

The warlock Halowyn sang a song,
And maids that heard to him did throng,

Until he wooed a prince’s child
Who was so pure and meek and mild.

Before her father then she stood,
‘May I to Halowyn in the wood?’

‘Forsooth my child, subdue this whim,
For none return who go to him.’

Before her mother then she went,
‘Can I to Halowyn o’er the bent?’

‘O nay my daughter, a thousand nos,
Who yields to him her life forgoes.’

Next to her sister did she say,
‘O Halowyn’s call I must obey.’

‘O no my sister do not dare,
All maids are lost who enter there.’

At last her brother did she see,
‘So strong will I to Halowyn flee.’

‘’Tis nought to me perchance you swerve,
’Tis you your honour must preserve,
And you your crown to rightly serve.’

To her chamber she has gone
To set her finest garments on.

What put she on her youthful chest?
A silken blouse and milk-white vest.

What clasped she round her slender girt?
A belt of bronze, a crimson skirt.

What fixed she on her breast discreet?
A silver brooch with gems explete.

And what adorned her smooth soft throat?
A lustrous pearl of size and note.

Till lastly on her flaxen hair,
Her crown of gold, chased and rare.

She tripped into the castle stall
And chose a steed, the best of all.

She climbed astride the saddled horse
And singing low pursued her course,

Till in the forest’s midmost part
Came he who had bewitched her heart.

Her horse he tethered ’mid some fern.
Her noble heart with fear did burn.

‘Greetings,’ bade he, ‘O virgin fair!’
And in her glistening eyes did stare.
‘Come down below, unbind your hair.’

As many hairs as she let fall,
So many tears her cheeks did pall.