in a previous chapter.  One of the earliest representatives of this school was Conon de Bethune, born in 1155; he took part in the Crusades of 1189 and 1199.  Blondel de Nesles, Gace Brule and the Chatelain de Coucy are also well-known names belonging to the twelfth century.  Thibaut IV., Count of Champagne and King of Navarre (1201-1253), shared in the Albigeois crusade and thus helped in the destruction of the poetry which he imitated.  One of the poems attributed to him by Dante (De Vulg.  El.) belongs to Gace Brule; his love affair with Blanche of Castile is probably legendary.  Several crusade songs are attributed to Thibaut among some thirty poems of the kind that remain to us from the output of this school.  These crusade poems exhibit the characteristics of their Provencal models:  there are exhortations to take the cross in the form of versified sermons; there are also love poems which depict the poet’s mind divided between his duty as a crusader and his reluctance to leave his lady; or we find the lady [132] bewailing her lover’s departure, or again, lady and lover lament their approaching separation in alternate stanzas.  There is more real feeling in some of these poems than is apparent in the ordinary chanson of the Northern French courtly school:  the following stanzas are from a poem by Guiot de Dijon,[34] the lament of a lady for her absent lover—­

  Chanterai por mon corage
  Que je vueill reconforter
  Car avec mon grant damage
  Ne quier morir n’afoler,
  Quant de la terra sauvage
  Ne voi nului retorner
  Ou cil est qui m’assoage
  Le cuer, quant j’en oi parler
      Dex, quant crieront outree,
      Sire, aidies au pelerin
      Por cui sui espoentee,
      Car felon sunt Sarrazin.

  De ce sui bone atente
  Que je son homage pris,
  E quant la douce ore vente
  Qui vient de cel douz pais
  Ou cil est qui m’atalente,
  Volontiers i tor mon vis: 
  Adont m’est vis que jel sente
  Par desoz mon mantel gris. 
      Dex, etc.

“I will sing for my heart which I will comfort, for in spite of my great loss I do not wish to die, and yet I see no one return from the wild [133] land where he is who calms my heart when I hear mention of him.  God! when they cry Outre (a pilgrim marching cry), Lord help the pilgrim for whom I tremble, for wicked are the Saracens.

“From this fact have I confidence, that I have received his vows and when the gentle breeze blows which comes from the sweet country where he is whom I desire, readily do I turn my face thither:  then I think I feel him beneath my grey mantle.”

The idea in the second stanza quoted is borrowed from Bernard de Ventadour—­

  Quant la douss’ aura venta
      Deves vostre pais. 
  Vejaire m’es qu’eu senta
      Un ven de Paradis.