Poème du Mois - 002 Fiez vous y !

This is the second installment in a series celebrating medieval French lyric poetry. Charles d'Orléans, a prince of the French realm and Duke of Orléans, composed these verses during his quarter-century of captivity in England following the catastrophe of Agincourt. The poem 'Fiez vous y' (Trust in it) emerges from that strange liminal space between prisoner and poet, where loss becomes language and solitude transforms into song. These are not verses of bitterness but of exquisite melancholy, written in the refined tradition of the French courtly love lyric, where the heart's suffering is rendered beautiful, where exile becomes an occasion for craft. The poet addresses a beloved, weaving together themes of loyalty, patience, and the endurance of the spirit through adversity. For readers seeking the origins of European lyric poetry, this poem offers a window into the medieval mind: sophisticated, emotionally complex, and startlingly modern in its expression of feeling.