When broom bears apples and hemlock bears honey

This is a poem or song from a fifteenth-century manuscript of songs and carols, which includes among many others this carol of the Virgin Mary, and the Annunciation carol 'Tidings true'. Today's poem is on a very conventional theme, the untrustworthiness and instability of the world, but this is a particularly neat expression of the idea. The rhetorical impossibilia are my favourite bit, promising that true rest can be found in this world only 'when broom bears apples and hemlock bears honey'.


Wold God that men might sene
Hertes whan they bene,
For thinges that bene untrew.
If it be as I wene,
Thing that semeth grene
Is ofte faded of hew.


Will is tak for reson;
Trew love is full geson;
No man sett be shame.
Trost is full of treson;
Eche man oderes cheson;
No man him seilfe will blame.

This warlde is variabell;
Nothing therein is stable,
Asay now who so will.
Sin it is so mutable,
How shuld me be stable?
It may not be thorow skill.

Whan brome will appelles bere,
And humloke hony in fere,
Than seke rest in lond.
With men is no pees;
Ne rest in hart is, no lese,
With few be see and sond.

Sithen there is no rest,
I hold it for the best,
God to be our frend,
He that is our Lord,
Deliver us out with his word,
And graunt us a good ende!

A rough translation:

Would to God that men could see
Hearts as they really be,
As things that are untrue;
For if it be as I ween, [believe]
Things that seem green [i.e. fresh]
Are often faded in hue.

Self-will is mistaken for reason;
True love is very scarce;
No one cares for shame.
Trust is full of treason;
Every man accuses someone else,
But no one himself will blame.

This world is variable,
Nothing therein is stable;
Let anyone test it who will.
Since it is so mutable,
How can anyone be stable? [secure]
Reason says this cannot be.

When a broom-bush bears apples,
And hemlock bears honey,
Then look for rest in this world.
Among men is no peace;
Rest in heart belongs to few,
Truly, by sea or by shore.

Since there is no rest,
I hold it for the best
To take God as our friend.
May he who is our Lord
Deliver us by his word,
And grant us a good end.

God resting (BL Egerton 1894)

'It is not sufficient therefore for us to study the most excellent things unless we do it in the most excellent of manners'

10 October is Thomas Traherne Day, in my world.  I've posted lots of my favourite sections from Centuries of Meditations before, but I feel like C. S. Lewis did about this book - "I could go on quoting it forever".  So today I'll restrict myself to one extract, but also suggest that you go and listen to this reading of another superb passage.

Credenhill in Herefordshire, where Traherne was parish priest

Having been at the University, and received there the taste and tincture of another education, I saw that there were things in this world of which I never dreamed; glorious secrets, and glorious persons past imagination. There I saw that Logic, Ethics, Physics, Metaphysics, Geometry, Astronomy, Poesy, Medicine, Grammar, Music, Rhetoric, all kinds of Arts, Trades, and Mechanisms that adorned the world pertained to felicity; at least there I saw those things, which afterwards I knew to pertain unto it: and was delighted in it. There I saw into the nature of the Sea, the Heavens, the Sun, the Moon and Stars, the Elements, Minerals, and Vegetables. All which appeared like the King's Daughter, all glorious within; and those things which my nurses, and parents, should have talked of there were taught unto me.

Nevertheless some things were defective too. There was never a tutor that did professly teach Felicity, though that be the mistress of all other sciences. Nor did any of us study these things but as aliena, which we ought to have studied as our enjoyments. We studied to inform our knowledge, but knew not for what end we so studied. And for lack of aiming at a certain end we erred in the manner. Howbeit there we received all those seeds of knowledge that were afterwards improved; and our souls were awakened to a discerning of their faculties, and exercise of their powers.

The manner is in everything of greatest concernment. Whatever good thing we do, neither can we please God, unless we do it well: nor can He please us, what ever good He does, unless He do it well. Should He give us the most perfect things in Heaven and Earth to make us happy, and not give them to us in the best of all possible manners, He would but displease us; and it were impossible for Him to make us happy. It is not sufficient therefore for us to study the most excellent things unless we do it in the most excellent of manners. And what that is, it is impossible to find, till we are guided thereunto by the most excellent end, with a desire of which I flagrantly burned.

The best of all possible ends is the Glory of God, but happiness was that I thirsted after. And yet I did not err, for the Glory of God is to make us happy. Which can never be done but by giving us most excellent natures and satisfying those natures: by creating all treasures of infinite value, and giving them to us in an infinite manner, to wit, both in the best that to omnipotence was possible. This led me to enquire whether all things were excellent, and of perfect value, and whether they were mine in propriety?

It is the Glory of God to give all things to us in the best of all possible manners. To study things therefore under the double notion of interest and treasure, is to study all things in the best of all possible manners. Because in studying so we enquire after God's Glory, and our own happiness. And indeed enter into the way that leadeth to all contentments, joys, and satisfactions, to all praises triumphs and thanksgivings, to all virtues, beauties, adorations and graces, to all dominion, exaltation, wisdom, and glory, to all Holiness, Union, and Communication with God, to all patience, and courage and blessedness, which it is impossible to meet any other way. So that to study objects for ostentation, vain knowledge or curiosity is fruitless impertinence, tho' God Himself and Angels be the object. But to study that which will oblige us to love Him, and feed us with nobility and goodness toward men, that is blessed. And so is it to study that which will lead us to the Temple of Wisdom, and seat us in the Throne of Glory.

Many men study the same things which have not the taste of, nor delight in them. And their palates vary according to the ends at which they aim. He that studies polity, men and manners, merely that he may know how to behave himself, and get honour in this world, has not that delight in his studies as he that contemplates these things that he might see the ways of God among them, and walk in communion with Him. The attainments of the one are narrow, the other grows a celestial King of all Kingdoms. Kings minister unto him, temples are his own, thrones are his peculiar treasure. Governments, officers, magistrates and courts of judicature are his delights, in a way ineffable, and a manner inconceivable to the other's imagination. He that knows the secrets of nature with Albertus Magnus, or the motions of the heavens with Galileo, or the cosmography of the moon with Hevelius, or the body of man with Galen, or the nature of diseases with Hippocrates, or the harmonies in melody with Orpheus, or of poesy with Homer, or of Grammar with Lilly, or of whatever else with the greatest artist; he is nothing, if he knows them merely for talk or idle speculation, or transient and external use. But he that knows them for value, and knows them his own shall profit infinitely.

'Nobody Comes'

I'm posting this Thomas Hardy poem today because it was written on 9th October, 1924.  It's always strange to be reminded that Hardy lived into the world of motor-cars and telegraph-wires; for some contemporary colour, you might like to listen to this as you read the poem.

Nobody Comes

Tree-leaves labour up and down,
And through them the fainting light
Succumbs to the crawl of night.
Outside in the road the telegraph wire
To the town from the darkening land
Intones to travellers like a spectral lyre
Swept by a spectral hand.

A car comes up, with lamps full-glare,
That flash upon a tree:
It has nothing to do with me,
And whangs along in a world of its own,
Leaving a blacker air;
And mute by the gate I stand again alone,
And nobody pulls up there.

'O life as futile, then, as frail!'

Today is the 120th anniversary of the death of Alfred Tennyson, and this is the section of In Memoriam which that fact made me think of.



LIV
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.


LV
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.


LVI
'So careful of the type?' but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, `A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.

'Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.' And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law—
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed—

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.


LVII
Peace; come away: the song of woe
Is after all an earthly song:
Peace; come away: we do him wrong
To sing so wildly: let us go.

Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;
But half my life I leave behind:
Methinks my friend is richly shrined;
But I shall pass; my work will fail.

Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,
One set slow bell will seem to toll
The passing of the sweetest soul
That ever look'd with human eyes.

I hear it now, and o'er and o'er,
Eternal greetings to the dead;
And 'Ave, Ave, Ave,' said,
'Adieu, adieu,' for evermore.

A Little Wodehouse

Bertie Wooster meets an academic's family, from the story 'Without the Option', first published in 1925.  It helps to know that he's pretending to be his friend Oliver Sipperley, for reasons amusing but too complicated to explain...

I feel I must note that this story fits nicely with the stereotype (cf. for instance The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) that Cambridge dons are more austere, faddish and unsociable than Oxford ones ;)



The Maison Pringle was quite a bit of a way out of Cambridge, a mile or two down the Trumpington Road; and when I arrived everybody was dressing for dinner. So it wasn't till I had shoved on the evening raiment and got down to the drawing-room that I met the gang.

"Hullo-ullo!" I said, taking a deep breath and floating in.

I tried to speak in a clear and ringing voice, but I wasn't feeling my chirpiest. It is always a nervous job for a diffident and unassuming bloke to visit a strange house for the first time; and it doesn't make the thing any better when he goes there pretending to be another fellow. I was conscious of a rather pronounced sinking feeling, which the appearance of the Pringles did nothing to allay.

Sippy had described them as England's premier warts, and it looked to me as if he might be about right. Professor Pringle was a thinnish, baldish, dyspeptic-lookingish cove with an eye like a haddock, while Mrs Pringle's aspect was that of one who had had bad news round about the year 1900 and never really got over it. And I was just staggering under the impact of these two when I was introduced to a couple of ancient females with shawls all over them.

"No doubt you remember my mother?" said Professor Pringle mournfully, indicating Exhibit A.

"Oh-ah!" I said, achieving a bit of a beam.

"And my aunt," sighed the prof, as if things were getting worse and worse.

"Well, well, well!" I said, shooting another beam in the direction of Exhibit B.

"They were saying only this morning that they remembered you," groaned the prof, abandoning all hope.

There was a pause. The whole strength of the company gazed at me like a family group out of one of Edgar Allan Poe's less cheery yarns, and I felt my joie de vivre dying at the roots.

"I remember Oliver," said Exhibit A. She heaved a sigh. "He was such a pretty child. What a pity! What a pity!"

Tactful, of course, and calculated to put the guest completely at his ease.

A Carol for St Francis

This is a medieval carol in honour of St Francis of Assisi, written by John Audelay, who lived in the first decades of the fifteenth century.  Audelay was a priest and chaplain to the Augustinian monastery at Haughmond Abbey in Shropshire, and he wrote a number of carols, including this lovely Christmas carol.  His carol to St Francis is not quite as exquisite as that poem, but it's very interesting nonetheless.

A thirteenth-century painting of St Francis, from Doddington in Kent; 

I wrote about this church's wall-paintings last year here.

Because Audley's language presents no real difficulties, this is in modern spelling; here's a link to the unmodernised text.

Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day!

1. A holy confessor thou were one,
And livedst in contemplation,
To think on Christ's Passion,
Who suffered death on Good Friday.
Saint Francis, to thee I pray,
Save thy brethren both night and day!

2. His Passion was in thee so fervent
That he appeared in thy presence;
Upon thy body he set his print,
His five wounds — it is no nay! ['there is no contradicting it']
Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day!

3. Upon thy body thou didst them bear,
After that time, full three year;
In all men's sight they did appear —
No water might wash them away.
Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day.

4. Whenever thou didst eat or drink,
On Christ's Passion thou wouldst think;
In five parts was thy parting
Of his sustenance, sooth to say.
Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day!

[This seems to refer to a practice of dividing food into five parts to recall Christ's five wounds.]

5. Christ granted thee, especially,
For on his Passion thou hadst pity,
To fetch thy brethren out of Purgatory,
Who lie there in sorrowful array.
Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day!

6. Thou thankedst Christ for his sweet sonde, [gift]
And thoughtst to go to the Holy Land;
For dread of death thou wouldst not wond [hold back, hesitate]
To teach the people the Christian faith.
Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day!

7. But Christ he knew well thine intent,
And turned thee away from that talent, [plan]
And bid thee make thy Testament,
And: “Come to me, for once and ay.”
Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day!

8. “Ah, holy Francis, now I see,
Since for my love thou wouldst die;
Thou shalt have joy perpetually,
As thou hast desired many a day.”
Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day!

9. His holy rule of religion
For his brethren he wrote anon,
And prayed them, for Christ's Passion,
To keep it well both night and day.
Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day!

10. A true example here may ye see,
On Christ's Passion to have pity,
And to live in love and charity,
That merry in heart be ye may.
Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day!

11. His last prayer to Christ this was,
For all who support this holy place:
“Gracious God, grant them thy grace,
Before thy Judgement at Doomsday.”
Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day!

12. Pray we to Francis, we who are present,
To save his brethren and his convent,
That they be never shamed nor shent, [destroyed]
By wicked man or fiends' affray.
Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day!

13. I pray you, sirs, for charity,
Read this carol reverently,
For I made it with weeping eye,
Your brother John the Blind Audelay.
Saint Francis, to thee I say,
Save thy brethren both night and day!



I particularly like verse 10, which sums up one lesson of Francis' life very nicely: "Here [i.e. by his life] you may see a true example: if you think with pity on Christ's Passion and live in love and charity, you may be merry in heart."  The paradox here is that to grieve over Christ's Passion leads to joy, and the word Audelay uses to describe Francis' example, which I've translated 'true', is actually sad, which does mean 'true' but also 'firm, serious, sober, grave'.  The word helps to highlight the paradox of Francis' serious light-heartedness, and reminds me of how Chesterton characterised Francis' asceticism.

And one further note: the terminology for these kinds of medieval verses is always a little uncertain, and sometimes I hesitate to use the word 'carol' for a poem like this lest it give the wrong impression - but Audelay himself calls it a 'carol', in the last verse, so we can use that word with a clear conscience.  (He also identifies himself by name; it's like he wanted to make our job easier!).  And it's appropriate: a carol like this, even one made with devoutly 'weeping eyes', seems to me - and probably seemed to Audelay - a fitting way to celebrate St Francis, lover of troubadour songs, jongleur de Dieu.

Francis receiving the stigmata, British Library Royal 2 A XVIII, f. 9v

More Medieval Multimedia

Now I have a little free time, I've started making more youtube videos of me reading things in Old and Middle English.  In terms of pronunciation Old English is by far the easier of the two languages, so that's what I've begun with, but there will probably be a few Middle English poems to come too.  My graphic design skills leave something to be desired, but otherwise I'm quite proud of my latest effort: the Magnificat in Old English.