I've been re-reading Sir Gawain over the past week. A flawed little man gallivants across (modern-day) Wales and northern England to keep a promise to an enemy. I always wish we got more details of Gawain's adventures en route, though, as the poet argues, 'it were too tough for to tell of the tenth dole [part].' I love the little map the poet traces of his wanderings; it's weird to compare it to my own journeys in the area.
Anyway, the reason I wanted to post about the poem today, is my second-favourite part of the poem. After dealing the immortal Green Knight one blow (a failed beheading), Gawain is bound by contract to receive one from him, but not for another year. The poet, much to my amusement (and delight) seizes the opportunity to wax lyrical on the change of seasons. The below is part modernised spelling, part translation, by AS Kline:
This gift of adventure has Arthur thus on the first
of the young year, for he yearned exploits to hear.
Though words were wanting when they went to sit,
now are they stoked with stern work, fullness to hand.
Gawain was glad to begin those games in hall,
yet if the end be heavy, have you no wonder;
though men be merry in mind when they have strong ale,
a year turns full turn, and yields never a like;
the form of its finish foretold full seldom.
For this Yuletide passed by, and the year after,
and each season slips by pursuing another:
after Christmas comes crabbed Lenten time,
that forces on flesh fish and food more simple.
But then the weather of the world with winter it fights,
cold shrinks down, clouds are uplifted,
shining sheds the rain in showers full warm,
falls upon fair flats, flowers there showing.
Both ground and groves green is their dress,
birds begin to build and brightly sing they
the solace of the soft summer ensuing after
on bank;
and blossoms bloom to blow
by hedges rich and rank,
while noble notes do flow
in woodland free and frank.
After, in season of summer with the soft winds,
when Zephyrus sighs himself on seeds and herbs;
well-away is the wort that waxes out there,
when the dunking dew drops from the leaves,
biding a blissful blush of the bright sun.
But then hies Harvest and hardens it soon,
warns it before the winter to wax full ripe;
then drives with drought the dust for to rise,
from the face of the field to fly full high;
wild wind from the welkin wrestles the sun,
the leaves lance then from linden, light on the ground,
and all grey is the grass, that green was ere;
then all ripens and rots, that rose up at first.
And thus wears the year into yesterdays many,
and winter walks again, as the world’s way is,
I gauge,
till Michaelmas moon
threatens a wintry age.
Then thinks Gawain full soon,
of his wearisome voyage.
The further back you go in English literature, the more you realise how powerful, and important, alliteration is.
By the way, Kline didn't make up 'dunking dew;' it's really there in the original; ('donkande dew'). It's one of my favourite details from the Middle English, alongside the leaves "lancing from the linden."
The Gawain poet's random but welcome pretext for describing the seasons reminded me of an eleventh-century Irish text (tr. Kenneth Jackson (1971, p66-7));
The order and regulation represented by these texts contrasts interestingly with a passage from A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which the fairy king and queen's personal quarrel disturbs the forces driving the seasons. The queen's speech on the matter is odd to read in the context of climate change:
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.
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