He cries his Culpe, he prays to God for grace.
"O God the Father who has never lied,
Who raised up Saint Lazarus from death,
And Daniel from the lions saved,
Save my soul from all the perils
For the sins that in my life I did!"


His right-hand glove to God he proffered;
Saint Gabriel from his hand took it;
Upon his arm he held his head inclined,
Folding his hands he passed to his end.
God sent to him his angel cherubim
And Saint Michael of the Sea in Peril,
Together with them came Saint Gabriel.
The soul of the Count they bear to Paradise.


Our age has lost much of its ear for poetry, as it has its eye for
colour and line, and its taste for war and worship, wine and women.
Not one man in a hundred thousand could now feel what the eleventh
century felt in these verses of the "Chanson," and there is no
reason for trying to do so, but there is a certain use in trying for
once to understand not so much the feeling as the meaning. The
naivete of the poetry is that of the society. God the Father was the
feudal seigneur, who raised Lazarus--his baron or vassal--from the
grave, and freed Daniel, as an evidence of his power and loyalty; a
seigneur who never lied, or was false to his word. God the Father,
as feudal seigneur, absorbs the Trinity, and, what is more
significant, absorbs or excludes also the Virgin, who is not