O Plasmatour, that thou end not the night,
Nor take my belovéd from my sight,
Nor I, nor tower-man, look on daylight,
’Fore God, How swift the night,
And day comes on.
“Lovely thou art, to hold me close and kisst,
Now cry the birds out, in the meadow mist,
Despite the cuckold, do thou as thou list,
So swiftly goes the night
And day comes on.
“My pretty boy, make we our play again
Here in the orchard where the birds complain,
’Till the traist watcher his song unrein,
Ah God! How swift the night
And day comes on.”
“Out of the wind that blows from her,
That dancing and gentle is and Thereby pleasanter,
Have I drunk a draught, sweeter than scent of myrrh.
Ah God! How swift the night.
And day comes on.”
Venust the lady, and none lovelier,
For her great beauty, many men look on her,
Out of my love will her heart not stir.
By God, how swift the night.
And day comes on.
V
Canzon
I ONLY, and who elrische pain support
Know out love’s heart o’erborne by overlove,
For my desire that is so firm and straight
And unchanged since I found her in my sight
And unturned since she came within my glance,
That far from her my speech springs up aflame;
Near her comes not. So press the words to arrest it.
I am blind to others, and their retort
I hear not. In her alone, I see, move,
Wonder.... And jest not. And the words dilate
Not truth; but mouth speaks not the heart outright:
I could not walk roads, flats, dales, hills, by chance,
To find charm’s sum within one single frame
As God hath set in her t’assay and test it.
And I have passed in many a goodly court
To find in hers more charm than rumour thereof ...
In solely hers. Measure and sense to mate,
Youth and beauty learned in all delight,
Gentrice did nurse her up, and so advance
Her fair beyond all reach of evil fame,
To clear her worth, no shadow hath oppresst it.
Her contact flats not out, falls not off short....
Let her, I pray, guess out the sense hereof
For never will it stand in open prate
Until my inner heart stand in daylight,
So that heart pools him when her eyes entrance,
As never doth the Rhone, fulled and untame,
Pool, where the freshest tumult hurl to crest it.