It is of her only I do be thinking, and she living and dead, and now I have made her with my songs so that the whole world may know her, and give her the love that is her due. May it please her to be ready for my own passage that is getting near; may she be there to meet me, herself in the Heavens, that she may call me, and draw me after her. ONLY HE WHO MOURNS HER AND HEAVEN THAT POSSESSES HER, KNEW HER WHILE SHE LIVED Ah, Death, it is you that have left the world cold and shady, with no sun over it. It’s you have left Love without eyes or arms to him, you’ve left liveliness stripped, and beauty without a shape to her, and all courtesy in chains, and honesty thrown down into a hole. I am making lamentation alone, though it isn’t myself only has a cause to be crying out; since you, Death, have crushed the first seed of goodness in the whole world, and with it gone what place will we find a second? The air and the earth and seas would have a good right to be crying out--and they pitying the race of men that is left without herself, like a meadow without flowers or a ring robbed of jewellery. The world didn’t know her the time she was in it, but I myself knew her--and I left now to be weeping in this place; and the Heavens knew her, the Heavens that are giving an ear this day to my crying out. LAURA WAITS FOR HIM IN HEAVEN The first day she passed up and down through the Heavens, gentle and simple were left standing, and they in great wonder, saying one to the other: “What new light is that? What new beauty at all? The like of herself hasn’t risen up these long years from the common world.” And herself, well pleased with the Heavens, was going forward, matching herself with the most perfect that were before her, yet one time, and another, waiting a little, and turning her head back to see if myself was coming after her. It’s for that I’m lifting up all my thoughts and will into the Heavens, because I do hear her praying that I should be making haste for ever. TRANSLATIONS FROM VILLON AND OTHERS VILLON PRAYER OF THE OLD WOMAN, VILLON’S MOTHER Mother of God that’s Lady of the Heavens, take myself, the poor sinner, the way I’ll be along with them that’s chosen. Let you say to your own Son that He’d have a right to forgive my share of sins, when it’s the like He’s done, many’s the day, with big and famous sinners. I’m a poor aged woman, was never at school, and is no scholar with letters, but I’ve seen pictures in the chapel with Paradise on one side, and harps and pipes in it, and the place on the other side, where sinners do be boiled in torment; the one gave me great joy, the other a great fright and scaring; let me have the good place, Mother of God, and it’s in your faith I’ll live always.