See, I thought so highly of her! Trusted, but the game is hollow, Not one won piece soundly clinketh; All the cardinals that Rome hath, Yea, they all were put upon. Her device is "Slyly Wary." Cunning are the snares they carry, Yet while they watched they'd be undone.
Whom Love makes so mad a rover, 'll take a cuckoo for a swallow, If she say so, sooth! he thinketh There's a plain where Puy-de-Dome is. Till his eyes and nails are gone, He'll throw dice and follow fairly --Sure as old tales never vary-- For his fond heart he is foredone.
Well I know, sans writing's cover, What a plain is, what's a hollow. I know well whose honor sinketh, And who 'tis that shame consumeth. They meet. I lose reception. 'Gainst this cheating I'd not parry Nor amid such false speech tarry, But from her lordship will be gone.
Sir Bertran,[2] sure no pleasure's won Like this freedom naught, so merry 'Twixt Nile 'n' where the suns miscarry To where the rain falls from the sun.
The fifth poem in Canello's arrangement, "Lanquan vei fueill' e flor e frug," has strophes in the form:
When I see leaf, and flower and fruit Come forth upon light lynd and bough, And hear the frogs in rillet bruit, And birds quhitter in forest now, Love inkirlie doth leaf and flower and bear, And trick my night from me, and stealing waste it, Whilst other wight in rest and sleep sojourneth.
The sixth is in the following pattern, and the third strophe translates:
Hath a man rights at love? No grain. Yet gowks think they've some legal lien. But she'll blame you with heart serene That, ships for Bari sink, mid-main, Or cause the French don't come from Gascony And for such crimes I am nigh in my shroud, Since, by the Christ, I do such crimes or none.
"Autet e bas" is interesting for the way in which Arnaut breaks the flow of the poem to imitate the bird call in "Cadahus en son us," and the repetitions of this sound in the succeeding strophes, highly treble, presumably, Neis Jhezus, Mas pel us, etc.
Autet e bas entrels prims fuoills Son nou de flors li ram eil renc E noi ten mut bec ni gola Nuills auzels, anz braia e chanta Cadahus En son us; Per joi qu'ai d'els e del temps Chant, mas amors mi asauta Quils motz ab lo son acorda.