Song
LOVE thou thy dream
All base love scorning,
Love thou the wind
And here take warning
That dreams alone can truly be,
For ’tis in dream I come to thee.
Planh for the Young English King
THAT IS, PRINCE HENRY PLANTAGENET,
ELDER BROTHER TO RICHARD “CŒUR DE LION”
From the Provençal of Bertrans de Born,
“Si tuit li dol elh plor elh marrimen.”
IF all the grief and woe and bitterness,
All dolour, ill and every evil chance
That ever came upon this grieving world
Were set together, they would seem but light
Against the death of the young English King.
Worth lieth riven and Youth dolorous,
The world o’ershadowed, soiled and overcast,
Void of all joy and full of ire and sadness.
Grieving and sad and full of bitterness
Are left in teen the liegemen courteous,
The joglars supple and the troubadours.
O’er much hath ta’en Sir Death, that deadly warrior,
In taking from them the young English King,
Who made the freest hand seem covetous.
’Las! Never was nor will be in this world
The balance for this loss in ire and sadness!
O skilful Death and full of bitterness,
Well mayst thou boast that thou the best chevalier
That any folk e’er had, hast from us taken;
Sith nothing is that unto worth pertaineth
But had its life in the young English King,
And better were it, should God grant his pleasure
That he should live than many a living dastard
That doth but wound the good with ire and sadness.
From this faint world, now full of bitterness
Love takes his way and holds his joy deceitful,
Sith no thing is but turneth unto anguish
And each to-day ’vails less than yestere’en,
Let each man visage this young English King
That was most valiant mid all worthiest men!
Gone is his body fine and amorous,
Whence have we grief, discord and deepest sadness.
Him, whom it pleased for our great bitterness
To come to earth to draw us from misventure,
Who drank of death for our salvacioun,
Him do we pray as to a Lord most righteous
And humble eke, that the young English King
He please to pardon, as true pardon is,
And bid go in with honourèd companions
There where there is no grief, nor shall be sadness.