Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TAILLEFER THE TROUVERE, by CLINTON SCOLLARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TAILLEFER THE TROUVERE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: They sailed in their long gray galleys, they tossed on the narrow sea
Last Line: On the verge of the fight at senlac with a song upon his lips!
Subject(s): Death; Heroism; Sea Battles; War; Dead, The; Heroes; Heroines; Naval Warfare


THEY sailed in their long gray galleys, they tossed on the narrow sea,
Till dim in the mists of morning were the shores of Normandy.
They were sixty thousand warriors, with never a fear at heart;
They were knights and squires and yeomen, adept in the soldier's art;
They were knights and squires and yeomen, whose school was the press of men,
Whose alphabet was their armor, whose sword was their only pen;
And none of the bold war-farers, though the flower of the land was there,
Bared braver brow to the southwind than Taillefer the Trouvere.

No laugh like his at the banquet, no hand like his on the lute,
No voice like his in the courtyard to banter the brawlers mute;
And never from lip of a jester did a blither quip take wing,
And never on caitiff's cuirass did a nobler brand outring.
But song was the soul of his living; aye, song was the breath of his life!
He had taken song to brother, he had taken song to wife.
In the tide-pulse of the ocean, in the wild wind-pulse of air,
There was more than mortal music to Taillefer the Trouvere.

They have harried the coast of Sussex, they have harried the coast of Kent;
They have trod the soil of the Saxon, and come to his peaked tent, --
To the fortressed hill of Senlac that out of the marsh uprears,
Where the golden Wessex dragon is hedged with the gleam of spears.
They have girt them tight for the onset, they have leaped in line for the fray;
What manner of man shall lead them, shall show them the victor's way?
To be first to fall on a foeman what manner of man shall dare?
Neither valorous knight nor bowman, but Taillefer the Trouvere.

In front of the foremost footman he spurs with a clarion cry,
And raises the song of Roland to the apse of the glowing sky.
A moment the autumn's glory is a joy to the singer's sight,
And the war-lay soars the stronger, like a falcon, up the height;
Then springs there a Saxon hus-carl, with thews like the forest oak,
And, whirling a brand of battle, he launches a titan stroke;
A sudden and awful shadow, a blot on the azure glare,
And dawn in a world unbordered for Taillefer the Trouvere.

Shall song over-span the ages for the Duke men name the great
Who founded the walls of empire on the ruins of a state?
Nay, not unto him our greeting across the flood of the years
With the countless slain ensanguined, and bitter with mourner's tears!
But unto the soul of the singer, to him of the fearless heart,
Shall our hail-cry strengthen star-ward o'er the seas that have no chart;
For song was the love of his lifetime, and he met death's chill eclipse
On the verge of the fight at Senlac with a song upon his lips!





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