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Advice to a Prince
Written in the persona of the Austin friar Robert Waldeby, personal physician to the Black Prince,
by Friar Thomas Broadpaunch
A Prince who would be King may council seek
From magistrate, philosopher, or knight,
From canons, scholars, Lords both proud and meek.
But when that Prince to poet says, Come write
Me words of wisdom which, when vexed, I might
Find knowledge in to guide me on my way,
Then may the poet find he's filled with fright,
For what can poet write for Prince that day?
And yet, dread Prince, I find that I can write,
And as a poet, Prince, I offer you
This certainty. Do only two things right
If you would have great fame and honor, too,
And bring Atlantia wealth and glory few
Kingdoms on this earth have ever known.
Whenever you do not know what to do,
Do these two things and joy shall bless your throne.
Let others of your retinue implore
That you do this and that all night and day.
Your Knights would have you do great deeds of war.
Your canons say be merciful and pray.
Your scholars say seek wisdom, don't delay.
Your magistrates will say the law enforce.
Your nobles say make merchants taxes pay.
But just two things you need to guide your course.
The border Barons say our lands defend.
The usurers say pay us more on debts.
The tailor says your raiment let me mend.
The diplomat says watch for foreign threats.
And all your live is full of cares and frets
And every single subject seeks redress
And all their whining fills you with regrets.
Remember, Prince, these two things to address.
What two things must you do, most noble Lord
If you would have your reign be filled with bliss?
The first: By you your queen must be adored
And loved beyond all reckoning. Do this,
And love Atlantia. All else dismiss.
For if you love these two, no act you do
While loving them can ever go amiss,
And from each act, great honor will ensue.
[Poem 1] [Documentation 1] [Poem 2] [Documentation 2] [Bio]
Documentation
The poetic form of this version of the advice is iambic pentameter eight line stanzas with a rhyme scheme of ababbcbc. This is the form of the Monk's tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. I originally wrote this in the form of the Monks table because I speak in the persona of the Austin (Augustinian) Friar Robert Waldeby, and did not discover the Friar's tale with it's simpler meter until after I completed the first draft. (The Friar's tale version was entered in the poetry competition at the coronation of Amalric and Caia.) Like Chaucer, I have occasional irregularities in the meter. I resort to rather more anastrophe and enjambment than Chaucer, he being far and away a better poet, and Waldeby in all likelihood being more used to expressing himself in the more flowing and complicated constructions of Latin and Greek.
Information on Waldeby comes from The English Austin Friars 1249-1538, by Rev. Francis Roth, O. S. A., published in New York by the Augustinian Historical Institute in 1966. Waldeby was personal physician to the Black Prince (p. 56). He worked with John of Gaunt in France and had gone to Spain to find him a bride (p. 86), and met the Black Prince in Toulouse (p. 87) and became the tutor of his son, the future Richard II. He later became, in succession, bishop of Aire, chancellor of Aquitaine, archbishop of Dublin, chancellor of Ireland (p. 87), co-ambassador to France, bishop of Chichester, and archbishop of York (p. 88). He died on December 29, 1397, and was buried in Westminster by order of the king (p. 89). Not well known now, he seems to have been famous in his own day.
As an Austin Friar, Waldeby followed the monastic rule of St. Augustine of Hippo, written around the year 400. The advice for the prince that I put in Waldeby's mouth, to love the Queen and love Atlantia, is based on the opening line of the rule of St. Augustine: "Ante omnia, fratres carissimi, diligatur Deus, deinde et proximus...". This is usually translated as "Before all else, dear brothers, love God and then your neighbor." If a friar loves God and his neighbor, he will do no wrong, and all that he does will work to the good. It would be the same for the King, a friar might believe, if he loves his Queen and his Kingdom.
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Untitled Work in Progress
By Lord Thomas Broadpaunch, Friar of the Brony of Caer Mear
Canto I
When I had passed the middle of my life
And wandered many years across the earth
In search of some small value in the strife
Of war and greed and famine, some rebirth
Of what is good and beautiful and true
And sought in vain some sense of noble worth
In all the palsied deeds we weak men do,
I wished I had some guide to take my hand
And lead me to a world where I might view
The rule of Peace and Justice in each land,
Where chivalrous nobility held sway,
But it was not to be. For me no grand
Old ancient poet would point out the way
Through all the evil things that we have done,
Nor teach me how to keep mad thoughts at bay.
And as I wandered neath the noon-day sun
Through lands where I had never walked before
And contemplated how I had begun
The cloistered life when one I did adore
Did die, and how I came to live like this,
A wretched gyrovague whom I deplore,
I feared I'd fall into despair's abyss.
Then suddenly I heard a babbling stream
Whose sound did fill me with a quiet bliss.
And soon, that stream did cross my path. A gleam
Behind the trees from whence it came then drew
Me by its side into the grove. Supreme
Contentment filled me as I walked. I knew
That, if I wavered not, I'd surely find
Some little time of joy. These had been few
For me, and so with such a single mind
As I had rarely known, I walked between
The woods and water, nearly going blind,
Until I came into a glade amene,
Then paused I at its edge, let eyes adjust
To such bright light. Then I beheld a scene
That caused me all my senses to distrust.
Across the glade where stream emerged from trees
Stood face to face two tall lean men adust
And ancient, made of stone, not flesh. And these
I knew, I know not how, to be the form
Of Virgil and of Dante. Then the bise
Did blow into the clearing like a storm.
From out the west, not north, and looking right
I saw between two trees a wolf enorm
And likewise made of stone, that eyed in fright
Some enemy it faced, and looking east,
I say a stoney lion that did excite
Great dread, for all it was a skinless beast,
Standing at the forest's edge all flesh
And sinew, maneless, hideless, humbled, trist.
And thus this vision did me there enmesh
As beast eyed beast across the clearing green,
And I stone poets eyed cross waters fresh,
Along the blissful stream that ran atween.
[Poem 1] [Documentation 1] [Poem 2] [Documentation 2] [Bio]
Documentation
The form is terza rima, defined by Merriam Webster's Unabridged Dictionary as "a verse form consisting of tercets usually in iambic pentameter in English poetry in which the second line of each rhymes with the first and third lines of the next. Dante's Divina Commedia is written in terza rima"
I consciously though poorly mimic Dante's Comedia here. The poet, Virgil, and the beasts all appear in the opening cantos of Dante's work (though the lion still has his skin in Dante), as does a leopard, who will show up shortly in my own effort. I plan to add only another five or six cantos to this in the coming weeks, having neither the talent nor the stamina of Dante.
I make no claim for the periodicity of all the words I use, but all the realy odd ones can be verified in the above cited dictionary, the OED, or both. Among these are adust, amene, atween, bise, enorm and trist. Gleam originally meant "a brilliantly bright radiance of light (as of the sun)" (M-W), so it not so odd that my humble narrator finds it blinding.
[Poem 1] [Documentation 1] [Poem 2] [Documentation 2] [Bio]
Medieval Bio: Lord Thomas Broadpaunch (Or, a talbot rampant sable maintaining in its mouth a burning brand, in sinister chief a mullet of eight points gules) (AoA, CP, OoP) is a late thirteenth century fugitive friar from the Order of Preachers priory in Canterbury who lives in happy exile in the Barony of Caer Mear and enjoys the kind nobility of her populous.
Mundane bio: David A. Warner is a technical editor for the company that invented most of the parts of the internet that Al Gore didn't, and lives in peaceful solitude in an area of Virginia variously known as Dawn, Ruther Glen, Frog Level, Hanover, Reedy Church, and Doswell.
[Poem 1] [Documentation 1] [Poem 2] [Documentation 2] [Bio] |
