Henceforth, my pretty eyes too
Will be overcast.
My love, thou shouldst take leave
Of other ladies;
Yes, my hero, thou shouldst avoid them.
When thou sawest me first,
I seemed to thee in truth
Right lovely made:
I remind thee of it, dear man!’ ”
These poems, simple and homely as they may seem to us, were loved and admired by the people for whom they were written. They were copied and preserved with the greatest care in the albums of kings and queens, and some of them were translated into foreign languages. The poem which we quoted first was translated as an Italian sonnet in the thirteenth century, and has been published in Franc Trucchi's “Poesie Italiane Inedite:”—