Charles d’Orleans: a great medieval poet in France

• Through the Forest of Gloomy Sadness: A Ballade
• Through the forest of gloomy sadness
• I chanced to make my way one day,
• And there I met with Love’s Goddess
• Who spoke and asked why I did stray.
• I said: “Fortune decreed this day,
• And exiled me, here, long ago,
• Rightly I call myself, alway,
• A man who wanders a path unknown.”

• Smiling, in her great humbleness,
• She answered: “Friend, if you could say
• Why you are filled with this distress,
• I’d seek to help you in every way:
• I set your heart on the road that day,
• To joy. Who has led it awry so?
• It troubles me now to see you stray,
• A man who wanders a path unknown.”

• “Alas!” I said, “my sovereign Princess,
• What should I say? You know my fate.
• It’s Death, who brings us mournfulness.
• He has taken the one I loved away,
• She in whom all my fond hopes lay,
• Who guided me: as my friend below,
• While she lived, so I need not play
• A man who wanders a path unknown.

• Blind I am, cast adrift today:
• Here and there with a staff I stray
• Lest I’m quite lost, feeling my road:
• Great shame it is, I must be alway
• A man who wanders a path unknown.”

• Never the Smoke without the Fire: A Rondeau
• Never the smoke without the fire,
• Nor sad heart without thought’s choir,
• Nor comfort without hopefulness,
• Nor happy glance without joy’s caress,
• Nor bright sun till the cloud lifts higher.

• Swiftly, my judgment you’ll acquire;
• May the wise amend it, as they desire!
• What I know I speak, I do confess:
• Never the smoke without the fire.

• For amusement laughter we require,
• Regret a sigh must ever inspire,
• A wish is born of longing’s excess,
• Doubt of a shift in the eye’s address —
• Tis a thing experience proves entire:
• Never the smoke without the fire.

Charles d’Orléans (1394-1465) was the Duke of Orléans in France, although today he is better known as one of the great medieval poets, with more than 500 poems to his name, written in both French and English. He was taken prisoner by the English during the battle of Agincourt and spent 24 years as a hostage of the English crown before being freed through a ransom paid by his allies. Most of his poetry was written while a hostage and reflects the melancholy mood caused by his time spent away from his homeland.