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Marvoil

A poor clerk I, 'Arnaut the less' they call me, And because I have small mind to sit Day long, long day cooped on a stool A-jumbling o' figures for Maitre Jacques Polin, I ha' taken to rambling the South here. The Vicomte of Beziers's not such a bad lot. I made rimes to his lady this three year: Vers and canzone, till that damn'd son of Aragon, Alfonso the half-bald, took to hanging His helmet at Beziers. Then came what might come, to wit: three men and one woman, Beziers off at Mont-Ausier, I and his lady Singing the stars in the turrets of Beziers, And one lean Aragonese cursing the seneschal To the end that you see, friends: Aragon cursing in Aragon, Beziers busy at Beziers Bored to an inch of extinction, Tibors all tongue and temper at Mont-Ausier, Me! in this damn'd inn of Avignon, Stringing long verse for the Burlatz; All for one half-bald, knock-knee'd king of the Aragonese, Alfonso, Quattro, poke-nose. And if when I am dead They take the trouble to tear out this wall here, They'11 know more of Arnaut of Marvoil Than half his canzoni say of him. As for will and testament I leave none, Save this: ‘Vers and canzone to the Countess of Beziers In return for the first kiss she gave me. ' May her eyes and her cheek be fair To all men except the King of Aragon, And may I come'speedily to Beziers Whither my desire and my dream have preceded me. O hole in the wall here! be thou my jongleur As ne'er had I other, and when the wind blows, Sing thou the grace of the Lady of Beziers, For even as thou art hollow before I fill thee with this parchment, So is my heart hollow when she filleth not mine eyes, And so were my mind hollow, did she not fill utterly my thought. Wherefore, O hole in the wall here, When the wind blows sigh thou for my sorrow That I have not the Countess of Beziers Close in my arms here. Even as thou shalt soon have this parchment. O hole in the wall here, be thou my jongleur, And though thou sighest my sorrow in the wind, Keep yet my secret in thy breast here; Even as I keep her image in my heart here.