No More Learning

The delights of love I never may

Enjoy, if not joy of my love afar,

No finer, nobler comes my way,

From any quarter: near or far.

So rich and high is her dower,

That there in the Saracen's tower

For her sake I would be their prize.

God that made all that goes or stays

And formed this love from afar

Grant me the power to hope one day

I'll see this love of mine afar,

Truly, and in a pleasant hour,

So that her chamber and her bower,

Might seem a palace to my eyes.

Who calls me covetous, truth to say,

Is right, I long for a love afar,

For no other joy pleases me today

Like the joy in my love from afar.

Yet what I wish is not in my power,

It is my godfather's curse, so sour,

That I love, yet love should be denied.

For what I wish is not in my power,

Cursed my godfather's word so sour,

Who has ruled my love should be denied.

Quan lo rius de la fontana

When the sweet fountain's stream

Runs clear, as it used to do,

And there the wild-roses blow,

And the nightingale, on the bough,

Turns and polishes, and makes gleam

His sweet song, and refines its flow,

It's time I polished mine, it would seem.

Oh my love, from a land afar,

My whole heart aches for you;

No cure can I find, for this no

Help but your call, I vow,

With love's pangs sweetest by far,

In a curtained room or meadow,

Where I and the loved companion are.

I shall lack that forever though,

So no wonder at my hunger now;

For never did Christian lady seem

Fairer - nor would God wish her to -

Nor Jewess nor Saracen below.

With manna he's fed as if in dream,

Who of her love should win a gleam!

No end to desire will my heart know

For her, whom I love most, I vow;

I fear lest my will should cheat me,

If lust were to steal her from me too.

For sharper than thorns this pain and woe

The sadness that joy heals swiftly,

For which I want no man's pity.

Without parchment brief, I bestow

On Filhol the verses I sing now,

In the plain Romance tongue, that he

May take them to Uc le Brun, anew.

They rejoice in it, I'm pleased to know,

In Poitou, and in Berry,

In Guyenne, and Brittany.

Note: Uc le Brun is Uc VII of Lusignan, who had taken the cross for the Second Crusade in 1147.
Filhol is the name of the joglar (jongleur, or minstrel)

No sap chanter qui so no di

No one can sing where no melody is,

Or fashion verse with words unclear,

Or know how the rhymes should appear,

If his logic inwardly goes amiss;

But my own song begins like this:

My song gets better, the more you hear.

Let no man wonder about me,

If I love one I've never known,

My heart joys in one love alone,

That of one who'll never know me;

No greater joy do I welcome gladly,

Yet I know not what good it may be.

I am struck by a joy that kills me,

And pangs of love that so ravish

All my flesh, body will perish;

Never before did I so fiercely

Suffer like this, and so languish,

Which is scarce fitting or seemly.

How often do I close my eyes

And know my spirit is fled afar;

Never such sadness that my heart

Is far from where my lover lies;

Yet when the clouds of morning part,

How swiftly all my pleasure flies.

I know I've never had joy of her,

Never will she have joy of me,

Nor promise herself, nor will she

Ever now take me as her lover;

No truth or lie does she utter,

To me: and so it may ever be.

The verse is good, I have not failed,

All that is in it is well placed;

He whose lips it may chance to grace,

Take care it's not hacked or curtailed

When Bertran in Quercy's assailed,

Or, at Toulouse, the Count you face.

The verse is good, and they'll be hailed

For something they'll do in that place.

Marcabru (fl. 1130-1150)

Marcabru was a powerful influence on later poets who adopted the trobar clus style. He experimented, as here, with the pastorela. Among his patrons were William X of Aquitaine and, probably, Alfonso VII of Leon. Marcabru may have travelled to Spain in the entourage of Alfonso Jordan, Count of Toulouse, in the 1130s. In the 1140s he was a propagandist for the Reconquista, of Spain from the Moors.

A la fontana del vergier

In an orchard down by the stream,

Where at the edge the grass is green,

In the shade of an apple-tree,

By a plot of flowers all white,

Where spring sang its melody,

I met alone without company

One who wishes not my solace.

She was a young girl, beautiful,

Child of the lord of that castle;

But when I thought the songbirds' call

Might, from its tree, make her heart light,

And sweet the fresh season all,

And she might hear my prayers fall,

A different look did cross her face.

Her tears flowed, the fount beside,

And from her heart her prayer sighed.