Wace
Wace (c. 1110 – after 1174), sometimes referred to as Robert Wace, was a Medieval Norman poet, who was born in Jersey and brought up in mainland Normandy (he tells us in the Roman de Rou that he was taken as a child to Caen), ending his career as Canon of Bayeux.
Quotes
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- Por remembrer des ancessours
Li fez è li diz è li mours,
Deit l'en li livres è li gestes
E li estoires lire as festes.- Who would remember his forbears,
What deeds, what words, what life was theirs,
Must chronicles and annals read
And histories written for his need. - Roman de Rou, line 1 (Tr. Harbottle and Dalbiac)
- Who would remember his forbears,
- Cil due vassals, ki tant cunquistrent,
Tant orent terres, è tant pristrent;
Emprès la mort, de lor enor,
N'ont cescuns fors sa lunguor.- These heroes twain, these conquerors grand,
Who took and kept full many a land,
Yet after death, for all their toil
Have each but their own length of soil. - Roman de Rou, line 53 (Tr. Harbottle and Dalbiac)
- These heroes twain, these conquerors grand,
- Tote rien se torne en déclin,
Tot chiet, tot meurt, tot vait à fin:
Hom muert, fer use, fust porrist,
Tur font, mur chiet, rose flaistrist,
Cheval trebusche, drap viésist:
Tot ovre fet od mainz périst.- All things to their decline do tend,
All falls, expires, comes to its end:
Man dies, iron rusts, wood rots away,
Tower sinks, wall falls, rose has its day.
Horse stumbles, cloth wears out apace,
No work of hands leaves lasting trace. - Roman de Rou, line 65 (Tr. Harbottle and Dalbiac)
- All things to their decline do tend,
- N'ont terre de Seingnor ki ne se pot aidier.
- None lord it o'er the land but they who help themselves.
- Roman de Rou, line 3329 (Tr. Harbottle and Dalbiac)
- Ci faut le livre Maistre Wace;
Qu'in velt avant fere, s'in face.- Here endeth Master Wace his book;
Who wanteth more to himself must look. - Roman de Rou, line 16,546 (Tr. Harbottle and Dalbiac)
- Here endeth Master Wace his book;
- Que force sormonte vertu.
Bone est force et engins mius valt,
Là vaut engins où force falt;
Engins et ars font mainte cose
Que force commenchier ne n'ose.- Wit is more than strength! Muscle is good, but craft is better. Skill devises means when strength fails. Cunning and engines bring many matters to a good end, that strength would not venture even to begin.
- Roman de Brut, line 8262 (Tr. Eugene Mason)
External links
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- Thomas Benfield Harbottle; Philip Hugh Dalbiac, Dictionary of Quotations: French and Italian, 2nd ed. (London: Swann Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd., 1904), pp. 31, 32, 158, 180, 214
- Eugene Mason, Arthurian Chronicles, Everyman's Library (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1912), p. 27