Says Oliver: "Indeed I hear you speak,
I do not see you. May God see and save you!
Strike you I did. I pray you pardon me."
Roland replies: "I have no harm at all.
I pardon you here and before God!"
At this word, one to the other bends himself.
With such affection, there they separate.


No one should try to render this into English--or, indeed, into
modern French--verse, but any one who will take the trouble to catch
the metre and will remember that each verse in the "leash" ends in
the same sound,--aimer, parler, cler, mortel, damnede, mel, deu,
suef, nasel,--however the terminal syllables may be spelled, can
follow the feeling of the poetry as well as though it were Greek
hexameter. He will feel the simple force of the words and action, as
he feels Homer. It is the grand style,--the eleventh century:--

Ferut vus ai! Kar le me pardunez!


Not a syllable is lost, and always the strongest syllable is chosen.
Even the sentiment is monosyllabic and curt:--

Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer!


Taillefer had, in such a libretto, the means of producing dramatic
effects that the French comedy or the grand opera never approached,
and such as made Bayreuth seem thin and feeble. Duke William's