he Albigeois crusade and thus helped in the
destruction of the poetry which he imitated. One of the poems attributed
to him by Dante (_De Vulg. El._) belongs to Gace Brule; his love affair
with Blanche of Castile is probably legendary. Several crusade songs are
attributed to Thibaut among some thirty poems of the kind that remain to
us from the output of this school. These crusade poems exhibit the
characteristics of their Provencal models: there are exhortations to
take the cross in the form of versified sermons; there are also love
poems which depict the poet's mind divided between his duty as a
crusader and his reluctance to leave his lady; or we find the lady [132]
bewailing her lover's departure, or again, lady and lover lament their
approaching separation in alternate stanzas. There is more real feeling
in some of these poems than is apparent in the ordinary chanson of the
Northern French courtly school: the following stanzas are from a poem by
Guiot de Dijon,[34] the lament of a lady for her absent lover--

Chanterai por mon corage
Que je vueill reconforter
Car avec mon grant damage
Ne quier morir n'afoler,
Quant de la terra sauvage
Ne voi nului retorner
Ou cil est qui m'assoage
Le cuer, quant j'en oi parler
Dex, quant crieront outree,
Sire, aidies au pelerin
Por cui sui espoentee,
Car felon sunt Sarrazin.

De ce sui bone atente
Que je son homage pris,
E quant la douce ore vente
Qui vient de cel douz pais
Ou cil est qui m'atalente,
Volontiers i tor mon vis:
Adont m'est vis que jel sente
Par desoz mon mantel gris.
Dex, etc.

"I will sing for my heart which I will comfort, for in spite of my great
loss I do not wish to die, and yet I see no one return from the wild [133]
land where he is who calms my heart when I hear mention of him. God!
when they cry Outre (a pilgrim marching cry), Lord help the pilgrim for
whom I tremble, for wicked are the Saracens.

"From this fact have I confidence, that I have received his vows and
when the gentle breeze blows which comes from the sweet country where he
is whom I desire, readily do I turn my face thither: then I think I feel
him beneath my grey mantle."

The idea in the second stanza quoted is borrowed from Bernard de
Ventadour--

Quant la douss' aura venta
Deves vostre pais.
Vejaire m'es qu'eu senta
Un ven de Paradis.

The greater part of this poetry repeats, in anot