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When Ireland’s fourth Nobel laureate of literature, Seamus Heaney, celebrated his 70th birthday last April, all of Ireland joined in. The Irish Museum of Modern Art held an exhibition of his illustrated books, a symphony was composed in his honor, a 14-foot bronze sculpture, first fashioned of peat, was unveiled in Bellaghy Bawn to commemorate his first poem “Digging,” and little red boxed sets went on sale filled with 15 CDs of the poet reciting all 11 books of his verse. That’s over 12 hours of compounded Seamus.

In a birthday address televised throughout Ireland, Heaney lightly called the CD set his “apotheosis as the vox in the box” and was quick to note that all of the gifts and praise extended to him were “not retirement presents, but ratifications and refreshments.” In other words, he is “keeping going.”

Proving that point, Famous Seamus, as Clive James once called him, has published another book. It’s a modernization of select works by a nearly forgotten poet who, in his time, was also well known: Robert Henryson, the greatest of the late-medieval Scots makars (poets). In his introduction Heaney writes that he made this book “first and foremost” to advocate “the work in question, for unless this poetry is brought out of the university syllabus and on to the shelves ‘a great prince in prison lies.’ ”

More by Katherine Eastland

Robert Henryson (born circa 1425) wrote over 5,000 still-surviving lines in Lowland Scots, a northern dialect of English. The original is printed (without appendix and glossary, to keep the book slim) on the facing pages. This allows the reader to soon realize that Scots is not far removed from contemporary English, and that Heaney keeps close to the original, often at the level of the word and not just of phrase. He also maintains the rollicking rhyme royal stanza, inherited from Chaucer, whom Henryson highly esteemed, calling him “worthie” and twice “glorious.” Heaney’s take—it is a stretch to call it a translation—reads as a confident and natural extension of Henryson’s work.

While Henryson’s poetry has survived, his biography has not, further pressing him into obscurity. Just two or three cloudy facts are all we know about him: He died shortly before 1505 when his contemporary William Dunbar famously wrote in rhyming couplets a litany for the dead, “Death of the Makars,” that Death “has done roun [whispered] to Maister Robert Henrisoun.” And by that fragment we know a bit about his position: As “Maister,” he was a known and learned man, a university graduate, but not necessarily a professor.

Sitting at the crossing point of Heaney’s fame and Henryson’s obscurity, this book nearly amounts to a beautiful joke between Heaney and Lady Fortune herself, especially since she plays a part in the Testament of Cresseid, the poem featured here at the start. The Testament, one of the masterpieces of 15th-century literature, is a 600-line epilogue to Chaucer’s monumental mock epic of the heart, Troilus and Criseyde. By Henryson’s own admission, the Testament is “a poem full of hurt.” It begins where Chaucer left off, with Cresseid spurning her first love, Troilus, for another, Diomede. Henryson continues the story to chronicle Cresseid’s “final quick declension”: Her new lover spurns her and she, in turn, scorns the gods for an inconstant love life.

“You gave me to believe, and I trusted you,” Cresseid cries, “that the seed of love was sown in my face.” Then the gods, led by Saturn and the moon Cynthia, goddess of inconstancy, decree that Cresseid, now a prostitute, will endure their curse of leprosy, don a “cloak and beaver hat,” and walk through town carrying “cup and clapper” for alms. It is a far fall from her highborn life.

But this is not a stock tale about woman as a snare or siren who gets her rightful due. In fact, the poet does not even judge her—that, it seems, is work cut out for those above him, such as the famous lady of inconstancy, Fortune. Reserving judgment, Henryson extends to her a sympathy that is (to use Heaney’s term) “dry-eyed.” It is also constant.

One of the most moving passages—in Henryson’s tongue and in Heaney’s faithful rendering—falls near the end of the tale: Troilus, Cresseid’s former lover who has always loved her, rides by on a horse and barely recognizes her now that her skin is spotted and ringwormed. She does not even register his face. The poets write this non-reunion scene in halting, mostly monosyllabic, words.

Than upon him scho kest up baith hir ene—

And with ane blenk it come into his thocht

That he sumtime hir face befoir had sene.

Bot scho was in sic plye he knew hir nocht;

Yit than hir luik into his mynd it brocht

The sweit visage and amorous blenking

Of fair Cresseid, sumtyme his awin darling.

Upon his then she cast up both her eyes

And at a glance it came into his thought

That he some time before had seen her face

But she was in such state he knew her not;

Yet still into his mind her look had brought

The features and the amorous sweet glancing

Of fair Cresseid, one time his own, his darling.

This is poetry that tells the “music of what happens”—a phrase Heaney has used to describe what he strives for in his own poems. That music continues for the rest of the poem. The two characters, who do not meet again, act in remembrance of each other—a proper continuation of a non-reunion. Cresseid, growing weaker, bequeaths a ruby ring to him in her will; and once she has died, Troilus erects a tomb of gray marble for her. Nothing is said of life after death. “Since she is dead,” runs the last line, “I speak of her no more.”

While there is consolation for neither Cresseid nor Troilus, there is dignity in that they grieve but soon govern their grief. They have no delusions of grandeur, no bloated fictions. Like the sixth-century Christian philosopher Boethius, whom Henryson most likely read—perhaps even in Chaucer’s translation—Troilus and Cresseid find consolation in their philosophy, and Lady Philosophy stands as their defense against Lady Fortune.

The rest of the book follows Henryson’s advice “to mix merry in with graver matter.” It includes 7 of Henryson’s 13 fables, loosely based on Aesop’s and played out by fanciful animals (and the occasional man, who bumbles about with a cart and for the most part keeps mum). The stories are filled with vivid humor: a cock, for instance, who finds a jasper of great price and lets it go, telling it frankly, “You are not corn and corn is what I covet.” Such humor isn’t there just for sport, but to creatively illustrate Christian morals. And their lightness keeps them from sounding like broken gospel records.

Ultimately, Seamus Heaney’s latest book is a testament to endurance—to Heaney still working at his craft, to Henryson’s gathering (if late) audience, to the morals and humor expressed in the fables, to the lasting strength of Troilus and Cresseid, even to the English language itself. In this way The Testament is a comfort, and for a moment it quiets the fear behind the wish of any poet, famous or obscure, that what he makes might not be later known. As Chaucer wrote in Troilus and Criseyde, addressing his own book of poetry, “for there is so great diversity / In English and in writing of our tongue, / So pray I God that no one mis-write thee … That thou be understood, God I beseech.” Katherine Eastland is an assistant editor at The Weekly Standard.