Long Roundel Poems

Charles d'Orleans: a Medieval Marvel


Spring
by Charles d’Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Young lovers,
greeting the spring
fling themselves downhill,
making cobblestones ring
with their wild leaps and arcs,
like ecstatic sparks
struck from coal.

What is their brazen goal?

They grab...

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Rejection
a roundel by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it's useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.

I'm guiltless, yet my sentence has...

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Spring
by Charles d'Orleans (c.1394-1465)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Young lovers,
greeting the spring
fling themselves downhill,
making cobblestones ring
with their wild leaps and arcs,
like ecstatic sparks
struck from coal.

What is their brazen goal?

They grab at whatever passes,
so we can...

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Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain...

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Rondels, Roundels and Rondeaux

These are poetic forms similar to villanelles, with refrains (repeated lines) and sometimes double refrains.



Rondel: Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot...

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Oft in My Thought
by Charles D'Orleans
translation by Michael R. Burch

So often in my busy mind I sought,
Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
To give my lady dear;
But that sweet...

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Three Roundels by Geoffrey Chaucer

I. Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
translation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my...

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Pain is a cruel and vicious thing
That grips us tightly in its sting
It gnaws at us both day and night
And makes us tremble with its might

It starts with a twinge or a throb
And quickly turns...

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Oh spite, oh hell – to the Hell in my own name too!
The hell in love, the hell in romance, the hell of all men!
He being in my name as well of course… as if...

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"When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and
holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and
all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you,
and then...

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My heart did beat,
A fortress of stone, with no retreat,
I kept the world at bay with ease,
And let no one come close to me.

But then one day, a crack appeared,
A chink in my armor, to...

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Escape
roundel by Geoffrey Chaucer
translation by Michael R. Burch

Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.

He may question...

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Frost Like Filigree


Frost filigree, superb can be
     as nature weaves crystal delights.
          With varied lacey forms, we see
sculpture sparked by lights.

'Neath sun...

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I can smell the coppery scent of blood
and the stench of death, excrement, and piss,
a soldier lies dead, his face in the mud.
I mourn the soldier's death.

War is a putrid expanding abyss
where peaceful hopes soon...

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Each afternoon my mom and I would walk
          Two miles along the old lake road to meet
         ...

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It had been snowing all night-  it was bad,
you were going to work but I said stay;
you called me silly and I was so mad.
One last tear for love.

You left with a slam of...

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Little children don't understand 
What has happened you see.
All of a sudden they're an outcast it seems in their own
Family.
They're no longer held, cuddled, talked baby to so
They're confused as to how things changed over...

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   A springtime bloom with golden hue
  Swaying 'neath clouds with fluffy plume 
 Symbols of hope and all things new
  A springtime bloom

 They dare to rise in winter's gloom
...

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                                  ...

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 "The mountains are my bones
The rivers my veins
The forest are my thoughts
And the stars are my dreams
The ocean is my heart
It's pounding is my pulse
The sounds of the earth write
The music of my soul"
_Unknown
_________________________

I...

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"Every secret memory, every experience in life, and every 
thought can be written within the words of a poem."

               ...

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My soul cries for Nature and natural things
To blend with my spirit as one
And circle this globe on powerful wings
Oh, show me all that Creation has made

I have been hidden where putrefaction clings
And where decay...

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My heart almost burst, knowing what may come,
fearing fate would select you to die first
when you got ill and fought not to succumb.
My heart almost burst.

It wasn't obvious who felt the worst
our moods flipped from...

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If only I could; I'd lasso the moon
and every star in the vastness of space,
as my gift to you on our honeymoon.
If only I could.

When I'm close to you, my heart starts to race
and my...

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Grandma, what's a constellation of shapes?
It's the stars your looking at tonight.
See how they're shining bright,
Twinkling, and blinking across the black crape.
You'll need to read Greek and Roman mythology
They're full of legends who had escapades...

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