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From The Trobador Poets, Selections from the Poems of Eight Trobadors translated from the Provençal with Introduction and Notes, by Barbara Smythe; Chatto & Windus: London, New York: Duffield & Co., 1911; pp. 183-185.
Gentle the lady is, and courteous too,
And many men her beauty love to view;
Her heart is given to faithful love and true.
Ah God, ah God, the dawn, how soon it comes!
WHEN the nightingale is crying
To his mate, and she replying,
My true love and I are lying
’Mid the flowers,
Till the watcher from the towers
Calls out: “Lovers, now arise!
I see daylight in the skies.”
Metrical Form. — That of both originals has been exactly preserved in the translation.
We have already met with an example of this genre among the works of Guiraut de Bornelh.
The originals of the above translations are preserved in only one MS., and it is quite impossible to tell who may have written them. The longer alba is perhaps the most beautiful specimen of Provençal verse that has come down to us. The refrain of Swinburne’s poem “In the Orchard” (Poems and Ballads, First Series), “Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon,” is borrowed from it.
