A Lady Laments for Her Lost Lover, by Similitude of a Falcon*
Alas for me, who love a falcon well !
So well I loved him, I was nearly dead:
Ever at my low call he bent his head,
And ate of mine, not much, but all that fell.
Now he has fled, how high I cannot tell,
Much higher now than ever he has fled,
And is in a fair garden housed and fed.
Another lady, alas ! shall love him well.
Oh, my own falcon whom I taught and rear’d !
Sweet bells of shining gold I have to thee
That in the chase thou shouldst not be afeard.
Now thou hast risen like the risen sea,
Broken thy jesses loose, and disappear’d,
As soon as thou wast skilled in falconry.
*Thirteen-century sonnet by an unknown poet, translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Taken from: The Art of Falconry being the De Arte Venandi cum Avibus of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. Translated and Edited by Casey A.Wood & F.Marjorie Fyfe. Stanford Univ. Press. 1969.
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