Forsooth, I trow, ye and your bow
For fear would draw behind:
And no mervayle: for little avail
Were in your counsel then:
Wherefore I will to the green wood go,
Alone, a banished man.


SHE

Right well know ye, that women be
But feeble for to fight;
No womanhede it is indeed
To be bold as a knight:
Yet, in such fear if that ye were
With enemies day or night,
I would withstand, with bow in hand,
To greve them as I might,
And you to save; as women have
From death men many a one:
For, in my mind, of all mankind
I love but you alone.


HE

Yet take good hede; for ever I drede
That ye could not sustain
The thorny ways, the deep valleys,
The snow, the frost, the rain,