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Anonymous translation
NO captive knight, whom chains confine, | |
| Can tell his fate and not repine; | |
| Yet with a song he cheers the gloom | |
| That hangs around his living tomb. | |
| Shame to his friends!—the king remains | 5 |
| Two years unransomed and in chains. | |
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| Now let them know, my brave barons, | |
| English, Normans, and Gascons, | |
| Not a liege-man so poor have I, | |
| That I would not his freedom buy. | 10 |
| I will not reproach their noble line, | |
| But chains and a dungeon still are mine. | |
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| The dead,—nor friends nor kin have they! | |
| Nor friends nor kin my ransom pay! | |
| My wrongs afflict me, yet far more | 15 |
| For faithless friends my heart is sore. | |
| O, what a blot upon their name, | |
| If I should perish thus in shame! | |
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| Nor is it strange I suffer pain, | |
| When sacred oaths are thus made vain, | 20 |
| And when the king with bloody hands | |
| Spreads war and pillage through my lands. | |
| One only solace now remains,— | |
| I soon shall burst these servile chains. | |
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| Ye Troubadours, and friends of mine, | 25 |
| Brave Chail, and noble Pensauvine, | |
| Go, tell my rivals in your song, | |
| This heart hath never done them wrong. | |
| He infamy, not glory, gains, | |
| Who strikes a monarch in his chains. | 30 |
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