Wooing a Nun
Be reconciled you busy messenger,
make a journey yonder from the borderland to the plain.
You left, you went away, by God,
4 I have need of you.
Gentle requests, faultless course,
you did well once in the place you know.
You arranged a girl for me with a single word,
8 arrange for me to see Mary's girls.
Choose pathways, go to proud Llanllugan,
where there are some as white as lime.
Seek in the church and address
12 the great jailer, girl's minder.
Say this to the jailer, this is the 'psalm',
the insistent demand of minstrels,
and lament how great is my complaint
16 and seek nuns for me.
The saints everywhere forbid me
women-saints of fair dormitories,
white as snow, like hillside gossamer,
20 swallows, convent-dwellers of the choir,
god-sisters every one
to Morfudd, gentle golden girl.
If I can have to keep me from grief
24 a clear-browed girl from the refectory,
if that one of snow's lovely colour
will not come for you despite heaping praise,
your two feet are good implements,
28 bring from the choir a fair girl to the woods,
friend of sixty more darlings,
seek the bell-ringer from the choir,
seek to trick the abbess
32 before the summer moon, fine hue of sunshine,
one who will come out, our bower,
with the black cloth, to the leafy grove.