Love flies all the world around: Love in wanton wiles is wound: Therefore youth and maid are bound In Love's fetters duly. She is joyless truly Who no lover yet hath found! All the night in grief and smart She must languish, wear her heart; Bitter is that woman's part. Love is simple, Love is sly; Love is pale, of ruddy dye: Love is all things, low and high: Love is serviceable, Constant and unstable: Love obeys Art's empery. In this closed room Love takes flight, In the silence of the night, Love made captive, conquered quite. The next is singularly, quaintly musical in the original, but for various reasons I have not been able to adhere exactly to its form. I imagine that it is the work of the same poet who composed the longer piece which I shall give immediately after. Both are addressed to Caecilia; I have used the name Phyllis in my version. THE INVITATION TO LOVE. No. 36. List, my girl, with words I woo; Lay not wanton hands on you: Sit before you, in your face Gazing, ah! and seeking grace: Fix mine eyes, nor let them rove From the mark where shafts of love Their flight wing. Try, my girl, O try what bliss Young men render when they kiss! Youth is alway sturdy, straight; Old age totters in its gait. These delights of love we bring Have the suppleness of spring, Softness, sweetness, wantoning; Clasp, my Phyllis, in their ring Sweeter sweets than poets sing, Anything and everything! After daytime's heat from heaven Dews on thirsty fields are given; After verdant leaf and stem Shoots the white flower's diadem; After the white flower's bloom To the night their faint perfume Lilies fling. Try, my girl, etc., _da capo_. The poem, _Ludo cum Caecilia_, which comes next in order, is one of the most perfect specimens of Goliardic writing. To render its fluent, languid, and yet airy grace, in any language but the Latin, is, I think, impossible. Who could have imagined that the subtlety, the refinement, almost the perversity of feeling expressed in it, should have been proper to a student of the twelfth century? The poem is spoiled toward its close by astrological and grammatical conceits; and the text is corrupt. That part I have omitted, together with some stanzas which offend a modern taste. PHYLLIS. No. 37. Think no evil, have no fear, If I play with Phyllis; I am but the guardian dear Of her girlhood's lilies, Lest too soon her bloom should swoon Like spring's daffodillies. All I care for is to play, Gaze upon my treasure, Now and then to touch her hand, Kiss in modest measure; But the fifth act of love's game, Dream not of that pleasure!