[O holy bishops, numberless ministers,
you, certainly, were thefirst to have
the joy of seeing Him lie upon straw
long ago.]The stanza form is visible in Gairdner’s edition; in the manuscript it is entirely
buried, written as continuous with the surrounding prose.^24 In theVita,in
other words, thefirst poet we hear–the foundation, indeed, of poetry–is the
king himself describing the incarnate Christ, but the material source occludes
this kingly making. Henry isfigured as the hidden progenitor of André’s
classicizing art, an art inseparable from theanimabreathed into this new
monarchy. When Henry enters London, the art becomes explicit:
Rex ipse Richemundiae comes Saturni luce, quo etiam die de hostibus triumpharat,
urbem Londinum magna procerum comitante caterva laetanter ingressus est. Ad
cujus adventum ego, etsi oculis captus, amore jampridem sui ac desiderio inflam-
matus astiti, laetusque poetico furore afflatus palam hoc carmen cecini:
De Prima Regis Victoria Carmen Sapphicum
Musa, praeclaros age dic triumphos,
Regis Henrici decus ac trophaeum
Septimi, lentisfidibus canora
Dic age, Clio. (^34 –^35 )[On Saturday–the same day of the week on which he had defeated his foes–
the king himself, the earl of Richmond, joyfully entered the city of London,
accompanied by a great retinue of nobles. Though I did not see his arrival with
my eyes, I was present at it because inflamed by my desire and my long-
standing love for him; and full of joy and inspired by poetic frenzy I publicly
sang these verses:
Sapphic Ode on the King’s First Victory
Muse, sing of illustrious triumphs,
of the glory and trophies of King Henry
the Seventh, sing songs, Clio, with
your pliant strings.]“Cecini”is, I think, to be understood in its fullest vocal sense here; André
bursts into song. If Bosworth was lost among the lacunae of text, the blind
bard can now recapture origin through pure voice. It is not, of course,
unmodulated; as thevatesseized with divine frenzy, André is also heard
in the Sapphic meter that signifies his own humanist competence. Lack
is rewritten as plenitude; in a move presented both as spontaneous and
as multiply determined – not least by the homoerotics of patronage
28 Court Poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland