Greco-Christian stream·Beguine Mystics·The Mengeldichten (Mixed Poems) of Hadewijch·Section III

Section III

The closing section of the Hadewijch-authentic Mengeldichten (Poems XI–XVI). Poems XVII–XXIX, traditionally attributed to a later "Hadewijch II" in the school tradition, will be a separate project (and will be transparently marked as such).

Six poems of unusual variety and weight close out Hadewijch's authentic Mengeldichten corpus:

• Poem XI — the long doctrinal verse on the noble-infidelity (edele ontrouwe) — Hadewijch's most-cited Mengeldichten-doctrine. He who stands after particular knowing lacks one point of right Love. The soul who falls in un-rest of noble infidelity, which is stronger and higher than troth. Troth that one may content with Reason and please with sense lets herself often be satisfied with what infidelity will not — noble infidelity may not rest before she has attained the very best.
• Poem XII — short advisory verse-letter. The famous inverted-counsel quatrain: When you would gladly speak, then be silent; when you would gladly sleep, then wake; when you would gladly be silent, then speak — and let no one fail of you. In all your habits be in measure, in your doing and in your leaving. The doctrinal-pause stanza on self-will and being led by the Spirit.
• Poem XIII — In God, who is our Love. The famous Psalm 45 echo: Audi, filia — Hear, daughter; if you are daughter, then obey the Father; the King desires your beauty (concupiscet rex decorem tuum, Ps 45:12). Closes: The time is short; here is much to do. Be fier toward Love and bold.
• Poem XIV — the famous antiphonal-paradoxes Song. Twenty-three paired antitheses about Love's contraries: Her sweetest are her storms; her deepest abyss is her fairest form. To wander-lost in her is to come near; to be hungered toward her is feeding and tasting... All Love's apparently-cruel modes are revealed as her gracious other-side. Closes with the autobiographical: Her false threats, her false promises — by them I am no more deceived; I will be her being all that she is — whether good or fell, it is all one to me.
• Poem XV — the long doctrinal Nine-Months Conception of Love — a sustained Marian-pregnancy metaphor in which the soul becomes-Mary, conceives Love in her, and carries Love nine months before the Christological birth. The nine months are unfolded as nine virtues: faithful Fear (the first month — making profession in God, ecce ancilla Domini); gladly-suffered patience (the second month); the third month — exercise that increases the count; sweet Nature (the fourth month); hidden practice (the fifth month); Trust (the sixth month); Righteousness (the seventh month); Wisdom of Love (the eighth month); and the ninth month, when Wisdom swallows up all that she loves. Then the mighty time of Love comes, and storms at every hour upon Wisdom. The child is borne forth: humility has its fitness wherewith she with herself is enough. Between the two of them the child is full-carried, that lay in great rest, in the deepest of humility in the highest of Love. Closes with the seven-days-per-week as the seven gifts of the Spirit, and the measure-for-measure doctrine — he must measure to them with the same measure with which they measure him.
• Poem XVI — the famous closing sound-play poem. Seven short stanzas of unusual lyrical intensity, ending with one of the most musically dense passages in all medieval Dutch literature: Ay lief hebbic lief een lief / Sidi lief mijn lief / Die lief gavet om lief / Daer lief lief met her hief / Ay minne ware ic minne / Ende met minne minne u minne / Ay minne om minne ghevet dat minne / De minne al minne volkinne.

Same conventions as Sections I–II. Below the 5K-word judge threshold; self-review only. With the shipping of Section III, the Hadewijch-authentic Mengeldichten (Poems I–XVI) are now COMPLETE at approximately 11K English words across three sections.

Poem XI

XI. The Noble-Infidelity Doctrine

He who stands after particular knowing
— him lacks one point of right Love.
Such knowing one asks often too early,
and that is not enough;
for it seems self-will,
and not from the Spirit a leading.
For were it a leading-from-the-Spirit,
God would very quickly bring it to pass.
And that is too childishly loved,
that one wills many singularities
and chooses to be in delight.
That is failing-of high living.

One shall, neither for feeling nor for knowing,
serve any thing but to love
with Love in Love.
That one not shrink from hell,
nor of heaven's hope make any deed.
That one for hell and for heaven
were evenly glad and evenly serious.
And that one love without satiety
and desire above measure
and above Reason and above sense
— that were great gain in Love.

When one takes, one should give;
and what Love demands, one should live.
When the judgment is given to the soul,
then she knows that she lives in Love;
and when she feels miserableness,
then she may know Love's manners.
All that she may then attain
shall Love command of her and demand.
If she lives so enough toward Love
— that is well Love's fitting.

One must practice her with heart and sinne⁷
and follow with troth and with Love.
Yet — though one knows nothing of Love —
one loses, as one may know,
heart and powers and all the sinne,
and Love has bound the will.
And to the person one must give so much
that one is plagued in this life.
With the miserable one suffers need;
with the slain, death;
with the bound, painfulness;
and with the lovers, heartiness.

He who would in Love's service stand for Love's sake
must receive many an unrest.
The nearness of Love's nature
takes from the soul her enduring.
The more she comes, the more she steals;
the more she shows, the more she hides.
He who shall with Love by Love stand-fast
— let him, while living, undergo death,
that in Love nothing might be kept from him
which he with labor might attain.
The nature that conquers all powers
— death gives and takes life;
she is so strong in her work,
she fears nothing — she is so bold.
In her is all the power of God;
Love's being is at her command.
Where Love with Love in Love is
— that is a bottomless abyss
wherein they all must drown
who let themselves sink into her.
And those who follow her in her nature
— to them she gives an un-stilled-enduring.

Love springs out of her own nature
and makes the hearts in Love stir.
Those who follow the power of drawing Love
shall know the nobility she has within;
that no one may to another tell,
nor write, nor spell —
he who Love with Love has loved,
what wonders he finds in the height.
Yet may Love's desires
with all of this not be stilled.
She rights herself in all above her having;
Love lets herself have no rest.
Were all the suffering together —
that ever was, and is, and shall be —
they could not so much win
as the desire of right Love.
She grips at suffering above measure
and at working what Love wills to leave her.
She receives in unrest and in restlessness
— Love lets her not endure —
she falls in un-rest of edele ontrouwe — noble infidelity —¹
which is stronger and higher than from troth.
Troth which one may content with Reason
and please with sense
lets herself often be satisfied
with what infidelity will not.
Troth must often miss what infidelity may attain.
Noble infidelity may not rest
before she has attained the very best.
All that Love is, she wills to attain
— and it may not fail her.
Of this she feels many a sour-thing
that Love might better in a short hour.
She bears it as it came from infidelity,
though she well knows it comes from troth.
From desire of impatient Love
she may win no rest;
and from desire of the strong Love
she loses rest and enduring within.
The higher she sinks in Love,
the more un-ready she finds her desire.

For one in miseries cannot find enough,
nor can desire be filled.
For she comes from so high a nature,
she cannot endure in any small thing.
Love flees and desire follows after,
and ever finds un-ready standing there.
The height cannot attain
that Love herself is; that must escape her.
Could the soul know the nature
in which she is loved by God with Love,
then she would faint in great longing
and altogether in pleasures flow.
That were too great rest in troth.
He who loves must suffer much sorrow.

He who would stand in troth's service
and would receive troth-of-troth
and would live in high troth,
and in her service take and give
according to her right — be he free and strong and bold —
always to do her dearest will:
if he spares honor or ease for it,
he is the friend who failed in need.

Poem XII

XII. When You Would Gladly Speak, Then Be Silent

God be with you, and give you all
to love what one shall love,
and to hate what is to be hated,
and to be fitting to all truth.
Serve the truth where you may,
and spare yourself for no virtue
— not for comfort nor for honor —
for that gladly suffer many a turning.

Truth has nothing to do with honor;
she is always in herself bold.
Hold yourself one-only to your nobility,
and spare no labor.
Be merciful to those who scorn you;
comfort those who grieve themselves.
Serve Love at every season,
and set in her all your diligence.
All storms shall you, for her, bow under;
for her honor shall you be silent.

When you would gladly speak, then be silent;
when you would gladly sleep, then wake;
when you would gladly be silent, then speak —
and let no one fail of you.
In all your habits be in measure,
in your doing and your leaving.
The debt that you owe to God
— pay gladly at every season,
both in hate and in Love.
This labor yourself to learn to know.

What meets you in your sense,
therein mark your scath and your gain.
Whether self-will is also Spirit?
Therein lies subtlety of all the most.
Folk think it to be of the Spirit;
led, it is self-will of all the most.
They think also that what condemns them
is comfort and comes from God.
These are three subtle things
that fulfill humans most.
Of all the points that one practices,
the wisdom that lies in this
is unknown and un-understood,
for humans do not receive
and will labor for Love's honor.
They make now so many turnings.
And do not be angry that I speak thus.
It does troth no lack to you.
You know in part how you should live,
even though your recklessness leaves you.
God be with you at all seasons,
and make in him all your delight.

Poem XIII

XIII. The King Desires Your Beauty

In God who is our Love
— as far as I know Love —
I would be grieved were he not alone
he whom we love and intend
with such Love as he is.
Dear heart, so I greet you,
and with what I am, without forgetting —
you know it well, all that I let you know —
that Love wills to be practiced where one is to her,
and to know what one is to her, then to live free.
Ever wills she to hear and to test,
to gladden and to sadden.
There may Love not be without;
she is ever tempering in wonder.
So sorely disturbed is Love's nature
that she cannot rest one hour
unless she practice with her Beloved in sweet Love,
or in storm of sinne.

God has done us wonder
that he has undertaken us with Love.
After that we are made for this
— to know how Love with Love tastes —
so turn yourself with right virtue
to the sweet Love, all that you may,
to practice with all good habits,
with sweet sinne, with full peace.
Wake in the bond of right Love,
and labor to understand the voice
with which Love herself speaks.
See that you do not fail her.
Is Love to you sweet, is she to you cruel —
be at her will at all seasons ready.
So I have ever been wont, and so I understand —
it stands also in Audi, filia.²
Are you daughter? then obey the Father;
be ready to his service altogether.
Henceforth shall you behold God's work
and work all that is needful to all those
who have need of you, as he wrought
in will, in work, in thought.
Thereafter he bids one bow the ears,
where one shall hear Love's voice
— obedient from without and from within,
and to know nothing but the will of Love.
When one is thus obedient to Love,
so one shall forget by this
the folk of strangers and of friends,
of those whom we hold-in-mind and of those whom we love;
and forget all creatures,
to think on the sweetness of Love's nature.

He bids forget the house of one's father
— for here would all altogether be lacking
that all those should be forgotten
who have possessed heaven —
angels, saints, here the human.
Might one then have the wish
that one by these all forget,
and know only of the oneness of Love?
When you for him will so heed,
the King shall your beauty desire —
for no beauty in his nature
satisfies him but his pure nature.
When one cannot think anything else
than him to through-kiss and therein to sink
— that is God-like living after God's enough.
Those who thus one-only to all of Love give-themselves-up,
whose beauty he desires, and adorns him with it
after his enough, after Love's habit
— those are God-like, the people say.
But there is some God-likeness that never came-to-be:
his beauty the King does not desire.
Have mercy on yourself, that it so seldom happens,
and see that the King desire yours.

I think I rage at this:
that he is un-craved and unknown
by his own, and unloved;
so that he cannot with his nature
do what he in Love foresaw.
Ah, give over all of yourselves, and demand all,
and see what wonder it then shall all work:
the most-fearful wonder that ever was,
the very-first beauty that the King desires,
of which he with his whole nature
would enjoy in one enduring,
and to encounter the beauty with one beauty,
and greet with one only greeting,
and to kiss with one only mouth,
and to fathom the only grounds,
and with one only seeing to see-through all
that is and was and shall be,
and that all with one only wisdom understood,
and with one only will of one only spirit,
and with one only kingdom equally rich,
in one form, in one likeness,
and in one feeling, in one might with all
— that fulfills as he shall yet know.

Ah, to me is unknown how that is.
To God and to his beloved-ones may have mercy.
Of the service of Love I know counsel;
but when it comes to the dear practice,
how one with Love practices the Beloved
— so my knowing is soon told.
So I fare as the blind one is wont to fare,
and make from the beginning my ending.
When Beloved with Beloved goes-into Love's life,
there one should give-back a fair beginning;
there must he end who knows it not
and to whom the feeling of Love is un-ready.

Now though the King desires us not,
that to us be woe and sorrow,
we shall gladly bow the ears
and as one of his children obey,
and see and mark and understand
what he wills and has through-us done.
And shall forget strange things,
and all joys in particular —
of friends, of below, of above —
and of all the sufferings, praise Love;
and shall hope, for the sake of good befalling,
that Love shall yet give-her-full to us.

Could we but for Love's sake leave
strange comforts and substitutes,
and we adorn ourselves in fair countenance,
in high will, in high deed.
If we loved with Love all that she loves,
and her glory were to us known,
so she would do herself within
into one fruition, into one knowing.
Jesus Christ help us with this,
who himself, of Love, all delight
and all virtue has revealed,
and with his clarity has clarified.

Let him to us make Love known,
and clarify all our matters,
and our heart and our sense,
and do his one-only Love therein,
that shall make us know how one shall
in perfections live in him wholly.
The time is short; here is much to do.
Be fier toward Love and bold.

Poem XIV

XIV. The Antiphonal-Paradoxes Song

The sweetest of Love are her storms;
her deepest abyss is her fairest form.
To wander-lost in her is to come near;
to be hungered toward her is feeding and tasting.
Her despair is sure being;
her sorest wound is all healing.
To faint-toward her is enduring;
her hiding makes her find at all hours.
Her ill is health;
her secrecy opens her knownness;
her withholdings are her gifts;
without Reason is her fairest composing.
Her captivity is all delivered;
her sorest stroke is her sweetest comfort.
Her all-bereaving is great gain;
her going-away is coming-nearer;
her lowliest stillness is her highest song;
her greatest anger is her dearest thanks;
her greatest threat is all troth;
her sadness is the balm of all sorrow.
Her riches are all her lackings.

Still may one more of Love speak:
her highest troth makes one sink down low;
her highest being makes one deeply drown.
Her great riches make poverty;
much-attaining of her shows un-success.
Her comforts make the wounds great;
her handling brings many a death.
Her feeling is hunger; her knowing is wandering;
mis-leading is the manner of her school.
Her handlings are cruel storms;
her enduring is in un-readiness.
Her showing is hiding herself wholly;
her gifts are more taking-back-again;
her promises are all mis-leadings;
her adornings are all un-clothing;
her truth is all deceiving;
her certainty seems to many a lying.

Of this I, and many another, bear the witness
— may well at all hours bear it —
to whom Love has often shown
matters by which we were mocked,
and we thought we had what was hers.
Since she first drove me to those tricks,
and I noticed all her habits,
so I have held myself with her all otherwise.
Her false threats, her false promises
— by them I am no more deceived.
I will be her being all that she is;
whether good, whether fell — it is all one to me.

Poem XV

XV. The Nine-Months Conception of Love

In the high name of Love,
who may make you know her being,
I send you hearty greeting,
and pray her that she may to you
show her being to the ground
that no one could ever fathom.

Ah, how deep is the abyss of Love
that no man ever could recognize.
All that one knows of it is little good,
since it must yet be wanting.
That we lack — that comes by liden
(suffering): that we so slackly go forward
and live on poor comforts,
and give so little in storm of Love
our sinne and our powers,
which should run, and stand in care.

The ways to the high grades of Love,
without peace and without grace —
the ways one runs toward Love
they cannot recognize, those
who are measured in their works
and strengthen themselves with pleasure,
and live in torment about scath, in gladness about success,
by strange being in proud spirit.

But he who would perfectly know
the mighty being of Love
shall, with humble heart,
make sweetness and smart alike,
and receive in one glory,
in one will, in one memory,
sweet and sour in one satisfaction,
and all pain without saddening.
For Love may very well make-good
the heavy wandering of her roads.
So low shall one in humility sink
— yes, above all human thinking —
of all who are born to the world,
shall the greatness of Love come therein.

Will you thus fall and in all bow-down —
so shall you obtain perfect Love.
For that drew God down into Mary,
and with that same he yet would yield
who himself so low for Love could keep —
he could not from him his highness withhold;
he should receive him and bear the count,
as a child shall grow up in its mother.

Faithful Fear is the first month,
which preserves all the works and draws-along
to the holy law and to truth's command.
She makes profession in God.
You know well: profession makes him
who must believe one being
with the company in which he is,
to be fitting to all obedience.

When Fear, the first month,
has thus admonished the soul
to all obedience of Love,
to perfect service in which she knows it,
in death, in life, in all thing —
thus one receives as Mary received,
and in all so deep humility thereby:
that is ecce ancilla Domini.³
Thus the first month is undertaken;
with faithful Fear one has received.

The second month is gladly-suffering
for perfection, and narrow striving
to learn it there where one may.
Spare no blow against this.
Where you may suffer in beilagen (besieging),
there bend the eyes of truth and of knowing.
Receive it without your transgression;
so you bear Love in the highest grade.
For in patience one learns to know
how one may practice greater Love,
for she causes the vessel
to grow most and to rise up,
in which Love has been received.

The third month heightens the count
when one can thus endure all,
and one knows that one is bearing Love.
That is the exercise that one has toward it
— ever zealous and unconquered,
and so to have in there
according to the Scripture which teaches us:
sobrie, pie, juste vivamus in hoc seculo⁴.

The fourth month is sweet Nature,
in which so worthy a creature
as the human is shall grow up
and her manifold limbs all-over,
in the place where one bears her in,
and over-all where she has limbs.
One shall with sweet nature guard her,
and feed with kindled works.

The fifth month is hidden practice
— the sweet bearing one has received,
to practice the sweet Love hiddenly,
and the heavy pain that Love brings in,
which he feels who thus bears Love
and with humility has received.

The sixth month is trust,
from which one receives all riches,
and comfort that the child with the fruit shall come
— full-grown, rich, and giving all good.
Thus to let oneself on Love's seeing,
and to hook for the high day
that the noble child be born,
and fully in full, by full, beloved.

The seventh month is Righteousness,
who makes to nothing all labor.
Righteousness condemns and blesses
each being according to its season,
and takes and gives according to Love's fitness
and beyond all understanding of all sinne.
Righteousness' virtues are above nature,
and make sure the souls and purify them.
And by no virtue may one better know
that one is in truth of Love
than by that one in virtues against nature
has sweet taste without sour.
That is to be glad in trouble,
to have joy in contempts,
and to love those who do you ill.
That is, sure of Love, the highest deed,
friend with friend, with the glad ones glad —
that is to practice Love at every season.
But this is against nature, against might,
and Righteousness' highest lease.
Therewith one most-properly bears God
and has the perfectly growing within.

The eighth month is Wisdom of Love
and to know her being on every road —
as much as Love can love,
Wisdom swallows up all within.

The ninth — when Wisdom swallows-up
all that she in Love loves —
then comes Love's mighty time
and storms at all hours upon Wisdom.
When with all that one is,
one is enough for Love and fitting,
so is born in the ninth month
the child that humility had chosen.
Then has humility its fitness,
wherewith she with herself is enough.
Between the two of them the child is full-carried,
that has lain in a great place —
in the deepest of humility, in the highest of Love.
There one with all in every sinne
lives God thus with all might
in new Love day and night.
So becomes God all that one lives —
for he has in scripture spoken
so that he cannot let it be
that he shall measure to us with the same measure
with which we measure him.⁶

He who then thus by Love
is possessed in will, in works, above the sinne,
to all their will enough to Love —
shall he then also measure back?
Then he must give them that high low —
to their will as they themselves give —
he shall live with them altogether one;
otherwise the recompense would be a lie.
If he measure not with the same measure
— now the child full-grown is born
that by humility was chosen
and is full-grown by high Love,
nine months full-carried within,
and each month has weeks four,
and each says preparation and adornment
toward the great high day,
that Love may be fully born.
The first week is might; the second knowing.
The third will, and constant favor —
that completes the four weeks
and fills the month without lack.
Each week is of seven days;
the days are the seven gifts
which one must have if one shall pass through
the nine months in their seasons.

Wisdom teaches what one does.
Understanding bears witness to the work, done.
With Counsel one understands Love's fitness.
With Strength one works her satisfaction.
With Knowledge one shall practice the Beloved.
With Mercy give great gifts.
With holy Fear one shall guard
all the works, and with troth feed.

Poem XVI

XVI. The Sound-Play Closing Poem

I greet what I love
with my heart, bare.
My sinne dry up
in Love's orewoet.

Ah, hearty Love,
grow-up after your being;
so may my sinne
be healed of death.

Ah, heart, over-care —
were you what you are
in your nature, so it would be
something of my enduring's season.

Ah, over-sweet rest,
had you all that is yours attained —
so would my burdens
be lightened, that now so weigh.

Ah, over-sweet nature,
how does your heart do?
I cannot endure one hour —
I must all of Love be.

Ah, hearty maiden,
that I so much to you speak
— that does to me new troth
from deep Love's trick.

Ah, had we what we have,
so were we both so rich —
so would one find
nowhere our like.

Ah, I rage in mood with success
— yes, the good, that I to Love fully be.
Ah, in rage be wise — that is success.
Yes, in rage of Love, free.

I hook, I reach, I taste
the matter that seems sweet to me.
I know with sense what is therein:
Love, the medicine of my ill.

I suffer, I labor for sight;
I suckle with my blood.
I greet the sweet, the would-be
soothing of my orewoet.

I tremble, I cleave, I give;
I live on high expectation —
that my pain, the fine,
into his shall be wholly received.

Ay lief hebbic lief een lief —
Sidi lief mijn lief,
Die lief gavet om lief,
Daer lief lief met her hief.⁵

Ay minne, ware ic minne,
Ende met minne minne u minne;
Ay minne, om minne, ghevet dat minne
De minne al minne volkinne.

Translator's footnotes (project translation)

¹ Edele ontrouwe — noble infidelity — Hadewijch's signature doctrinal term. Ontrouwe (infidelity, faithlessness) is here used positively for the soul's holy dissatisfaction with anything less than the whole of Love. It is stronger and higher than trouwe (troth) precisely because Troth lets herself be satisfied with right Reason's account, where noble Infidelity refuses to rest until the very best has been attained. The doctrine appears also in Vision 13 (in the project translation of the Visioenen, the three voices of Love — rumor of the highest infidelity is the sweetest voice of Love), and is the direct doctrinal ancestor of Marguerite Porete's annihilated Soul and Eckhart's abegescheidenheit. The locus Mengeldicht XI is one of the two canonical sources for the edele-ontrouwe doctrine (the other is Vision 13).

² Audi, filia — Latin (Hear, daughter), the opening of Psalm 44:11 (Vulgate) / 45:10 (Hebrew): Audi, filia, et vide, et inclina aurem tuam: et obliviscere populum tuum, et domum patris tui. Hadewijch (writing c. 1230–1250) was reading the Vulgate; modern English Bibles use the Hebrew numbering. Hadewijch in Poem XIII anchors her whole verse-letter on this Psalm: bow the ear (inclina aurem), forget the house of your father (obliviscere domum patris tui), and the closing climax — the King desires your beauty — directly translates Ps 44:12 (Vulg.) / 45:11 (Heb.) et concupiscet rex decorem tuum.

³ Ecce ancilla Domini — Latin (Behold, the handmaid of the Lord), Luke 1:38 — Mary's fiat at the Annunciation. The Nine-Months Conception of Love metaphor (Poem XV) is unfolded entirely through this Marian fiat-conception structure: as Mary conceives the Word in her womb at her fiat, so the soul conceives Love in her at the moment of her own fiat — faithful Fear — and carries Love for nine months until birth.

⁴ Sobrie, pie, juste vivamus in hoc seculo — Latin (Soberly, justly, and godly may we live in this world), Titus 2:12 (Vulgate: sobrie et juste et pie vivamus in hoc saeculo). Hadewijch slightly inverts the Vulgate order (sobrie, pie, juste) — likely from memory or a different recension. The verse is the standard scriptural locus for the patristic-and-medieval vita activa-triad.

⁵ The closing sound-play couplet is preserved untranslated in the Middle Dutch on first occurrence. The play turns on the dual sense of lief (Beloved, dear-one) and lief (gladly, willingly) — and on the absolute repetition of minne (Love) eight times in four lines. A rough English-without-the-musicality might read:
Ah, dear, I have a dear, a dear; / Be you dear, my dear, / Who dear gave for dear / Where dear with dear made dear arise /
Ah Love, were I Love / And with Love loving your Love; / Ah Love, for Love grant that Love / Love wholly Love full-know.
But the sound is the meaning: the absolute reduction of all language to the single repeated word lief/minne enacts the soul's collapse into the One. This closing-of-the-corpus passage is among the most musically dense in all medieval Dutch literature and is the canonical Hadewijch lyric-coda. The dense internal-rhyme form is not confined to these final two stanzas: it begins at "I hook, I reach, I taste" and runs through the whole second half of Poem XVI — source lines 6956–6974 carry sequences such as woede / moede / spoede / goede; woet / vroet / spoet; hake / rake / smake / sake; kinne / sinne / inne / minne; doege / poege / toege / soege; soete / moete; beve / cleve / gheve / leve; pine / fine / sine. The English reproduces the sense and the lyric vocative-cadence but loses most of this rhyming-music — the Ay lief / Ay minne coda is only the final and densest moment of a form that the whole second half maintains.

⁶ With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again — Matthew 7:2 / Mark 4:24 / Luke 6:38 (Vulgate, Matt 7:2: in qua mensura mensi fueritis remetietur vobis). Hadewijch explicitly says hi in de screfture gesproken hevet — "he has spoken in Scripture" — flagging this as a direct dominical saying, not a doctrinal aphorism of her own. The whole Nine-Months Conception of Love (Poem XV) turns on this measure-for-measure structure: as the soul measures to God in nine months of carrying Love, God measures back to the soul.

⁷ Sinne — Middle Dutch sinne names the integrated faculty of inner perception / intellect / mind / mode-of-feeling, never the modern English "senses" (which are the five outer organs of sense-perception). The faculty is roughly equivalent to scholastic-Latin mens or intellectus, but with a stronger affective shading — sinne is how one inwardly perceives, feels, and considers, a single integrated faculty rather than a set of modal inputs. Convention in this section: sinne is preserved-italicized where it appears in isolation, and rendered "sense" (singular) where it appears paired with Reason (sinne ende redene) — Hadewijch's Augustinian distinction between the perceiving-faculty and the discursive-faculty. The reader can take "sense" in such pairings as the inward-perceiving faculty, never the bodily five-senses. (Cf. the audit recommendation that the rule be openly stated rather than implicit.)

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