I

Love and joy, and time and place
return me to my usual wits
from the yoke I had the other year,
when I went hunting hares with oxen;
now I’m better, Love-wise and worse,
since I love well, and for that I call myself lucky;
but still is my name Not-Loved
if Love doesn’t win her stark heart, and my pleads.

II

He who loses all his wealth together,
ought to look for a rich lord
to restore his loss and harm,
since a poor one wouldn’t be worth to him a minnow:
for that I have chosen her
to whom my heart nor my eyes have ever been closed,
and I vow, Love, if you conquer her for me,
peace forever with all the others.

III

He’s worth little a man wanting joy;
I know it well, I’ve had mine spoiled,
since for an excess of toil
the pain of which won’t leave my heart;
and if sadness doesn’t leave as joy did
soon shall have me my relatives insane;
but such is the one that has turned my heart
that I would die old, loving her.

IV

I don’t know man so firm in God,
hermit nor monk nor cleric,
as I am in her of whom I sing,
and that’ll be proved ere new year comes;
I am more faithful to her than to half of myself,
and so I would be if I were king or duke:
so pure it is my heart in her
that I’d be blind ere I long for another one.

V

For that of whom I’ve so feared and doubted
I now grow better and loftier,
since an adage I have heard once
tells me it thunders as long as it rains;
albeit I fail five years or six,
how gladly, when my hair’ll be hoary,
I’ll enjoy that for which I suffer,
as loving and pleading the scornful heart is sweetened.

VI

Out of long sighing and grievous wailing
can take me the one I uplift myself for
since now for a seemly visage only
I have stirred a wholly new song.
I walk up the slope and I don’t complain,
since gently this mountain moves me to think:
Go up, heart! It is well you suffer:
go on as long as you don’t fail in the one you brood.

VII

Gold shall be viler than iron
before Arnaut leaves loving the one he’s secretly devoted to.

Arnaut Daniel (12th Century)