From the soothed limbs upward spread
    Glides a mist divinely shed,
    Which invades the heart and head: 
    Drowsily it veils the eyes,
    Bending toward sleep’s paradise,
    And with curling vapour round
    Fills the lids, the senses swound,
    Till the visual ray is bound
    By those ministers which make
    Life renewed in man awake.

    Underneath the leafy shade
    Of a tree in quiet laid,
    While the nightingale complains
    Singing of her ancient pains,
    Sweet it is still hours to pass,
    But far sweeter on the grass
    With a buxom maid to play
    All a summer’s holiday. 
    When the scent of herb and flower
    Breathes upon the silent hour,
    When the rose with leaf and bloom
    Spreads a couch of pure perfume,
    Then the grateful boon of sleep
    Falls with satisfaction deep,
    Showering dews our eyes above,
    Tired with honeyed strife of love.

    In how many moods the mind
    Of poor lovers, weak and blind,
    Wavers like the wavering wind! 
    As a ship in darkness lost,
    Without anchor tempest-tossed,
    So with hope and fear imbued
    It roams in great incertitude
    Love’s tempestuous ocean-flood.

A portion of this descant finds an echo in another lyric of the Carmina Burana:—­

    “With young leaves the wood is new;
      Now the nightingale is singing;
    And field-flowers of every hue
      On the sward their bloom are flinging. 
    Sweet it is to brush the dew
      From wild lawns and woody places! 
    Sweeter yet to wreathe the rose
      With the lily’s virgin graces;
    But the sweetest sweet man knows,
      Is to woo a girl’s embraces.”

The most highly wrought of descriptive poems in this species is the Dispute of Flora and Phyllis, which occurs both in the Carmina Burana and in the English MSS. edited by Wright.  The motive of the composition is as follows:—­Two girls wake in the early morning, and go out to walk together through the fields.  Each of them is in love; but Phyllis loves a soldier, Flora loves a scholar.  They interchange confidences, the one contending with the other for the superiority of her own sweetheart.

Having said so much, I will present the first part of the poem in the English version I have made.

FLORA AND PHYLLIS.

PART I.

No. 28.

    In the spring-time, when the skies
      Cast off winter’s mourning,
    And bright flowers of every hue
      Earth’s lap are adorning,
    At the hour when Lucifer
      Gives the stars their warning,
    Phyllis woke, and Flora too,
      In the early morning.