My sorrow is a sweet distress To which no alien bliss compares, And if my pain such sweetness bears, How sweet would be my happiness!
Full of joy I am and sorrow When I stand before her face.
There is no treasure-trove on earth Which I would barter for my pain; I love my grief, but spite and wrath Run riot in my heart; my brain Is reeling--and I laugh and cry. Jubilant and desperate, Exultant, I bewail my fate. Quarter! Lady, ere I die.
The earlier troubadours were still ignorant of the later dogma which made chaste love the sole fountain of virtue and the road to perfection--the beloved woman can make of her admirer what she wills--a saint or a sinner.
Love heals the sick And a grave does it delve For the strong; mars the beauty of beauty itself, Makes a fool of the sage with its magic, A clown of the courteous knight, And a king of the lowliest wight.
False can I be or true for her, Sincere or full of lies, A perfect knight or worthless cur, Serene or grave, stupid or wise.
In the kingdom of love Folly rules and not sense.
It was typical of this enthusiastic love that the social rank of the beloved, the mistress, was invariably above the rank of the lover. The latter was fond of calling himself her vassal and serf, proclaiming that she had invested him with all his goods; even kings and German emperors composed love-songs, although in all probability they would have achieved their purpose far more quickly by other means; but in all cases we find the characteristic attitude of the humble lover, looking up to his mistress. The underlying thought is obvious: Love, the loftiest value in all the world, is the great leveller of all social differences, a force before which wealth is as dust. "I would rather win a kind glance from my lady's eyes than the royal crown of France," was a favourite profession of the poets. Montanhagol, for instance, in a rhymed meditation, stated that a lady was wise in choosing a lover of a lower social rank, because not only could she always count on his gratitude and devotion, but she would also have more influence over him, a fact which in the case of a social equal or superior was, to say the least, a little doubtful. This supreme reverence for love soon became an accepted doctrine. We constantly meet the thought that chaste love alone can make a man noble, good and wise. I will select a few illustrations from a wealth of instances: