See introduction to d1_AytR_019. Metre: elegiac couplets.
Responsio Aytoni (n.d.)
[p73]
Responsio Aytoni
1Foemineos quid Galle juvat jactare triumphos?
Vix est foeminea digna Ioanna fide.
Haeccine plena Deo, magicis quae freta susurris
visa fuit stultis nomen habere Dei?
5Quam perminxerunt calones atque bubulci, 1
haeccine casta virum castra sequuta fuit?
Hine viri, quos foeminei praepostera virtus
exempli, et solus traxit ad arma pudor?
Mutavit fatum Nemesis, non foemina vindex,
10nec nisi semiviri foeminea arma canunt.
Lauda ergo ad libitum flammas, non invidet Anglus
12Heculeam Gallo qua petat astra viam.
[p73]
A response from Ayton
Why does it please you, Gaul, to boast of feminine triumphs? Joan is hardly worthy of feminine honour. Is this girl filled with God, who relies on whispered spells, who appeared to the stupid to hold the name of God? Is this the girl, upon whom servants and ploughmen ejaculated, and she who virtuously attended the camps of men? Are these people men, whom the absurd virtue of a feminine exemplar, and shame alone, have dragged into war? Nemesis has altered their fate, not a female champion; and no one sings of feminine arms unless they are unmanly. Freely praise, therefore, the flames: an Englishman does not block Hercules' path for the Gaul as he seeks out the stars.
