I shake and burn and quiver From love, awake and in swevyn, Such fear I have she deliver me not from pain, Who know not how to ask her; Who can not. Two years, three years I seek And though I fear to speak out, Still she must know it. If she won’t have me now, Death is my portion, Would I had died that day I came into her sway. God! How softly this kills! When her love look steals on me. Killed me she has, I know not how it was, For I would not look on a woman. Joy I have none, if she make me not mad Or set me quiet, or bid me chatter. Good is it to me if she flout Or turn me inside out, and about. My ill doth she turn sweet. How swift it is. For I am traist and loose, I am true, or a liar, All vile, or all gentle, Or shaking between, as she desire, I, Cerclamon, sorry and glad, The man whom love had and has ever; Alas! who’er it please or pain, She can me retain. I am gone from one joy, From one I loved never so much, She by one touch Reft me away; So doth bewilder me I can not say my say nor my desire, And when she looks on me It seems to me I lose all wit and sense. The noblest girls men love ’Gainst her I prize not as a glove Worn and old. Though the whole world run rack And go dark with cloud, Light is Where she stands, And a clamour loud in my ears. IV _Vergier_ In orchard under the hawthorne She has her lover till morn, Till the traist man cry out to warn Them. God how swift the night, And day comes on. O Plasmatour, that thou end not the night, Nor take my belovéd from my sight, Nor I, nor tower-man, look on daylight, ’Fore God, How swift the night, And day comes on. “Lovely thou art, to hold me close and kisst, Now cry the birds out, in the meadow mist, Despite the cuckold, do thou as thou list, So swiftly goes the night And day comes on. “My pretty boy, make we our play again Here in the orchard where the birds complain, ’Till the traist watcher his song unrein, Ah God! How swift the night And day comes on.” “Out of the wind that blows from her, That dancing and gentle is and Thereby pleasanter, Have I drunk a draught, sweeter than scent of myrrh. Ah God! How swift the night. And day comes on.”