Why, it runs straight off into English verse—­

     When grass is green and leaves appear
     With flowers in bud the meads among,
     And nightingale aloft and clear
     Lifts up his voice and pricks his song,
     Joy, joy have I in song and flower,
     Joy in myself, and in my lady more.

And that may be doggerel; yet what is it but

     It was a lover and his lass,
     With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino,
     That o’er the green cornfield did pass
     In the spring-time, the only pretty ring-time—­

or

     When daffodils begin to peer,
     With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
     Why then comes in the sweet o’ the year;
     For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.

Nay, flatter the Anglo-Saxon tradition by picking its very best—­and I suppose it hard to find better than the much-admired opening of Piers Plowman, in which that tradition shot up like the flame of a dying candle: 

     Bote in a Mayes Morwnynge—­on Malverne hulles
     Me bi-fel a ferly—­a Feyrie me thouhte;
     I was weori of wandringe—­and wente me to reste
     Under a brod banke—­bi a Bourne syde,
     And as I lay and leonede—­and lokede on the watres,
     I slumberde in a slepynge—­hit sownede so murie.

This is good, solid stuff, no doubt:  but tame, inert, if not actually lifeless.  As M. Jusserand says of Anglo-Saxon poetry in general, it is like the river Saone—­one doubts which way it flows.  How tame in comparison with this, for example!—­

     In somer, when the shawes be sheyne,
     And leves be large and long,
     Hit is full mery in feyre foreste
     To here the foulys song: 

     To se the dere draw to the dale
     And leve the hilles hee,
     And shadow hem in the leves grene
     Under the grene-wode tre.

     Hit befel on Whitsontide,
     Erly in a May mornyng,
     The Son up feyre can shyne,
     And the briddis mery can syng.

     ‘This is a mery mornyng,’ said litell John,
     ’Be Hym that dyed on tre;
     A more mery man than I am one
     Lyves not in Cristiante.

     ‘Pluk up thi hert, my dere mayster,’
     Litull John can sey,
     ’And thynk hit is a full fayre tyme
     In a mornyng of May.’

There is no doubting which way that flows!  And this vivacity, this new beat of the heart of poetry, is common to Chaucer and the humblest ballad-maker; it pulses through any book of lyrics printed yesterday, and it came straight to us out of Provence, the Roman Province.  It was the Provencal Troubadour who, like the Prince in the fairy tale, broke through the hedge of briers and kissed Beauty awake again.