Poésies De Charles D'orléans

This collection holds the verses of a 15th-century French duke who spent twenty-five years as a prisoner in England after the catastrophe at Agincourt. Charles d'Orléans wrote through the fog of exile, crafting poems that pulse with longing for home, love, and lost youth. The verses move between tender addresses to his beloved Beaulté and the cold presence of Dame Merencolie (Lady Melancholy), who walks beside him through his captivity. What emerges is a remarkable portrait of a nobleman turned poet, someone who transformed private grief into language of startling beauty. The poems carry the particular sadness of a prince denied his inheritance, separated from his wife, watching his youth slip away in foreign towers. Yet they also crackle with delight in beauty, with wordplay, with the sheer pleasure of crafting verses. This is poetry written in the gap between what was taken and what remains: love, memory, and the resources of language itself. The dual-language format lets readers hear the original Middle French alongside modern translations, revealing the music beneath five centuries of dust.