he world no more I pray
Than this: alone with her to stay
Withouten strife.
Could she but know the ills that slay
Her lover's life!

Was never woman nobler wrought;
And when she blithe to sleep is brought,
Well for him who guessed her thought,
Proud maid! Yet O,
Full well I know she will me nought.
My heart is woe.

And how shall I then sweetly sing
That thus am marred with mourning?
To death, alas, she will me bring
Long ere my day.
_Greet her well, the sweete thing,
With eyen gray!_

Her eyes have wounded me, i-wis.
Her arching brows that bring the bliss;
Her comely mouth whoso might kiss,
In mirth he were;
And I would change all mine for his
That is her fere.[25]

Her fere, so worthy might I be,
Her fere, so noble, stout and free,
For this one thing I would give three,
Nor haggle aught.
From hell to heaven, if one could see,
So fine is naught,
[Nor half so free;[26]
All lovers true, now listen unto me.]

Now hearken to me while I tell,
In such a fume I boil and well;
There is no fire so hot in hell
As his, I trow,
Who loves unknown and dares not tell
His hidden woe.

_I will her well, she wills me woe;
I am her friend, and she my foe;_
Methinks my heart will break in two
For sorrow's might;
_In God's own greeting may she go,
That maiden white!_

_I would I were a throstlecock,
A bunting, or a laverock,[27]
Sweet maid!
Between her kirtle and her smock
I'd then be hid!_

[25] _Fere_, companion, lover. "I would give all I have to
be her lover."

[26] Superfluous verses; but the MS. makes no distinction.
_Free_ means noble, gracious. "If one could see everything
between hell and heaven, one would find nothing so fair and
noble."

[27] Lark. The poem is translated from Boeddeker, page 161
ff.

The reader will easily note the struggle between our poet's
conventional and quite literary despair and the fresh communal tone in
such passages as we have ventured, despite Leigh Hunt's direful
example, to put in italics. This poet was a clerk, or perhaps not even
that,--a gleeman; and he dwells, after the manner of his kind, upon a
despair which springs from difference of station. But it is England,
not France; it is a maiden, not countess or queen, whom he loves; and
th