‘There let with new delight our love abound —The sweet-voiced birds are carolling around— Until the watcher’s warning note resound. Ah God, ah God, the dawn! it comes so soon. ‘I drink the air that softly blows my way, From my true friend, so blithe, so fair, so gay, And with his fragrant breath my thirst allay. Ah God, ah God, the dawn! it comes so soon.’ ‘The lady is of fair and gentle kind, And many a heart her beauty has entwined, But to one friend is aye her heart inclined. Ah God, ah God, the dawn! it comes so soon.’ In the course of time, as the _alba_ became more and more an established form of art, the old popular features were gradually abandoned. Instead of introducing fictitious _dramatis personæ_ with fictitious dialogue, the poets begin to speak in their own proper persons, and the _alba_ lapses into the ordinary rank and file of subjective lyrical forms. Only the external signs of the refrain and the recurrence of the word _alba_ remain to account for the title, and even this rule has been abandoned in the curious little poem by ‘Sir Stephen’ above referred to. Of the variations arising from this process only one may be mentioned here, on account of its originality of conception. Guiraut Riquier is the author. Here the motive of the _alba_ appears entirely reversed. For here we meet with a lover tossing sleepless on his lonely couch and thinking of his love. To him night is full of gloom and terror, and ‘_e dezir vezer l’alba_’ (I long to see the dawn) is the burden of his song. To the same versatile poet we owe the representative specimen of the _serena_ or even-song. Formally it resembles the morning song, with which it shares the refrain, and in it the recurrence of the verbal key-note, which in this case is _ser_, or evening. As regards its relation to the _alba_, it may be said that the same sentiment appears here in converse significance. For the _serena_ is sung by a lover to whom a meeting has been promised, and who deprecates the day and its brightness that sever him from his heart’s desire. Although by no means wanting in truth and poetical suggestiveness, the situation is somewhat too subtle for the imagination of the people, and there is little evidence of a popular source of the _serena_, which appears to be little more than an outgrowth and modification of the _alba_ in its more artificial development. CHAPTER X. THE BALADA.