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Here's Monday's poem. It's a relatively anonymous medieval poem. (For that alone you must love medieval poetry, where relative anonymity is a possibility.) Here's what the translator and explicator, Brian Stone, says in his Medieval English Verse (Penguin 1964):
Love is soft and love is sweet, and speaks in accents fair;
Love is mighty agony, and love is might care;
Love is utmost ecstasy and love is keen to dare;
Love is wretched misery; to live with, it's despair.
Love's a lottery, mars your luck or gives you pleasures gay;
Love is lecherous, love is loose, and likely to betray;
Love's a tyrant here on earth, not easy to gainsay;
Love throughout this land of ours sends faithful ones astray.
Love's a stern and valiant knight, strong astride a steed;
Love's a thing that pleasures every longing woman's need;
Love persists and keeps its heat like any glowing gleed;
Love puts girls in floods of tears, they rage and cry indeed.
Love maintains his bailiwick in every path and street;
Love can wet with tears the cheek of any maiden sweet;
Love by chance brings misery inflamed with fever heat;
Love is wise and love is wary, wants its way complete.
Love's the softest, sweetest thing that in the heart may sleep;
Love is craft, and for its woes is well equipped to weep;
Love is false and love is eager, forces folk to long;
Love is foolish, love is firm, and love is comfort strong:
Love's a marvel to the man who treats of it in song.
Love is weal and love is woe, in gladness can maintain us;
Love is life and love is death, and love can well sustain us.
If love had strength for suffering as first it has when keen,
Then love would be the worthiest thing the world had ever seen;
But this is what is sung of it, and so it's ever been:
'Love begins in mighty pain and ends in grief and spleen,
With noble lady, steady wife, with virgin or with queen!'
[The poem] is a full working of a favourite motif, the definition of love, and is interesting for the indication it gives of an early approximation to standard ballad metre.
Love is soft and love is sweet, and speaks in accents fair;
Love is mighty agony, and love is might care;
Love is utmost ecstasy and love is keen to dare;
Love is wretched misery; to live with, it's despair.
Love's a lottery, mars your luck or gives you pleasures gay;
Love is lecherous, love is loose, and likely to betray;
Love's a tyrant here on earth, not easy to gainsay;
Love throughout this land of ours sends faithful ones astray.
Love's a stern and valiant knight, strong astride a steed;
Love's a thing that pleasures every longing woman's need;
Love persists and keeps its heat like any glowing gleed;
Love puts girls in floods of tears, they rage and cry indeed.
Love maintains his bailiwick in every path and street;
Love can wet with tears the cheek of any maiden sweet;
Love by chance brings misery inflamed with fever heat;
Love is wise and love is wary, wants its way complete.
Love's the softest, sweetest thing that in the heart may sleep;
Love is craft, and for its woes is well equipped to weep;
Love is false and love is eager, forces folk to long;
Love is foolish, love is firm, and love is comfort strong:
Love's a marvel to the man who treats of it in song.
Love is weal and love is woe, in gladness can maintain us;
Love is life and love is death, and love can well sustain us.
If love had strength for suffering as first it has when keen,
Then love would be the worthiest thing the world had ever seen;
But this is what is sung of it, and so it's ever been:
'Love begins in mighty pain and ends in grief and spleen,
With noble lady, steady wife, with virgin or with queen!'
