Poems and translations

Chapter 44: WALTER VON DER VOGELWEIDE

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

The collection gathers lyric and ballad-like poems that portray rural landscapes, local speech, and vivid characters through dark humor, elegy, and plainspoken lyricism; many pieces are concise narratives or monologues about love, death, loss, and social life, while others register mythic or meditative moods. A substantial section offers translations and adaptations from Petrarch, Villon, Leopardi, and medieval lyricists, varying between literal and free renderings. A prefatory essay frames the poet's interest in mixing exalted feeling with the material of ordinary life. The sequence balances songful rhythms with austere images and an abrupt, colloquial voice.

WALTER VON DER
VOGELWEIDE

I never set my two eyes on a head was so fine as your head, but I’d no way to be looking down into your heart.

It’s for that I was tricked out and out—that was the thanks I got for being so steady in my love.

I tell you, if I could have laid my hands on the whole set of the stars, the moon and the sun along with it, by Christ I’d have given the lot to her. No place have I set eyes on the like of her; she’s bad to her friends, and gay and playful with those she’d have a right to hate. I ask you can that behaviour have a good end come to it?