The Lymond Poetry by Dorothy Dunnett

Author:Dorothy Dunnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2003-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

From The World’s Instability

This wavering world’s wretchedness;

The failing, fruitless business;

The mis-spent time, the service vain;

For to consider is a pain.

The sliding joy, the gladness short;

The feigned love, the false comfort,

The sweet delayed, the flichtful train;1

For to consider is a pain.

The sugared mouths, with minds therefrae;

The figured speech, with faces tway;2

The pleasant tongues with hearts unplain;

For to consider is a pain.

WILLIAM DUNBAR

This anonymous poem dates from the thirteenth century. It is written in langue d’oïl, which was the language of the north of France during the medieval period, so called to distinguish it from the langue d’oc, or Provençal. (Langue d’oïl had numerous dialects, one of which, Francien, the language of the Île-de-France, Paris, and the court, is the ancestor of modern French.) It belongs to a family of brief French poems called pastourelles, which describe amorous adventures between knights and shepherdesses.

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