trobaire.org

a collection of literature from poets, bards, songwriters, and skalds in the SCA

Sonette VIII

olivier's picture
olivier
Poem (Canso): 

Complete in bliss, complete in every sense,
I tend my love with lover’s full service.
Need we no thing, but one another’s kiss,
Those moments lost, paid more in recompense.
On further wrong, my soul is made well dense,
That never could intrude vicious advice.
Instead in thoughts of her may it entice,
And beat the greater to flow humour thence.
Of pleasant mind and far more pleasant place,
Wish I but that here might we long remain.
Venus for lust lost her poor Adon’s face,
But cast I from my love? Never again.
Would this season of bliss never retire,
The beauty of my dame might all admire.

Documentation / Explanation (Razo): 

8. humour: Any of the body’s four humours from medieval physiology that balance each other out to make up the human form: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile (choler). The implication here is that the correct humour will flow to balance out an imbalanced body (which would act on passion, for example) and make the narrator more ‘proper’ in feeling and reason.
11. Adon: Adonis, the beautiful boy of classical myth who (in Shakespeare’s aptly-titled poem Venus and Adonis) was killed by a boar after being frightened away by Venus’s lustful advances in the forest.