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En mon cuer a un descort

from A 14th​-​Century Salmagundi by Blue Heron

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En mon cuer a un descort
Qui si fort le point et mort
Que, sans mentir,
S’Amours par son doulz plaisir
N’i met accort
Aveuc ma dame, pour mort
Me doy tenir.

C’est de mon loyal Desir
Qui me vuet faire gehir
Le mal que port
Et comment j’aim et desir
Ma dame sans repentir
Et sans confort.

Mais Paour s’oppose fort
Et dit que Desirs a tort
De ce querir.
Qu’elle crient Refus oir
Qui pas ne dort
Et Dangiers qui fait a mort
L’amant venir.

En mon cuer a un descort …

Si ne say que devenir
Quant de ma dame remir
Le gentil port,
Car Paour me fait fremir
Et trambler et tressaillir
Par son enort,

Et Desirs, san nul deport.
Fait mon cuer par son effort
Taindre et palir;
Biaute me vient assaillir;
Douceur m’endort.
Mais Amours me fait au fort
Taire et souffrir.

En mon cuer a un descort …

Las! einsi m’estuet languir.
Pleindre, plourer et gemir
En desconfort.
Ne bien n’ay fors Souvenir,
Dous Penser et li servir:
La me confort,

La seulement me deport,
La sont geté tuit mi sort
Et la me tir;
La vueil je vivre et morir
Et la m’acort;
La seront tuit mi ressort
Jusqu’au morir.

En mon cuer a un descort …


Translation:

There is a discord in my heart,
which so strongly pierces and wounds it
that I say without lying,
if Love by his sweet pleasure
does not make an accord
with my lady, I must consider myself
dead.

It comes from my loyal Desire,
which wants to make me confess
the wrongs I commit,
and how much I love and desire
my lady, without regret
and without comfort.

But Fear resists strongly
and says that Desire is wrong
to seek this,
for she fears hearing Refusal,
who never sleeps.
and Rejection, which makes a lover
come to his death.

There is a discord in my heart …

Thus I do not know what will become of me
when I admire my lady's
kind bearing,
for Fear makes me quiver
and tremble and shake
by his suggestion,

and Desire, without any respite,
makes my heart, by his effort,
fade and turn pale;
Beauty comes to assail me;
Sweetness puts me to sleep.
But Love firmly
silences me and makes me suffer.

There is a discord in my heart …

Alas! thus must I languish,
lament, weep, and groan
in discomfort,
nor have I anything good but Memory,
Sweet Thoughts, and my service to her:
there I find comfort,

there only do I rejoice,
there I have cast all my fate,
and thence I lead myself;
there I wish to live and die,
and to this I agree;
there shall be all my refuge
until I die.

There is a discord in my heart …

Translations by Scott Metcalfe, Thomas Forrest Kelly, and Lawrence Rosenwald.

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from A 14th​-​Century Salmagundi, released September 4, 2020

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Blue Heron Boston, Massachusetts

Winner of the 2018 Gramophone Classical Music Award for Early Music (the first non-European group to win the award), Blue Heron (Scott Metcalfe, dir.) has been acclaimed by The Boston Globe as “one of the Boston music community’s indispensables” and hailed by Alex Ross in The New Yorker for the “expressive intensity” of its interpretations. ... more

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