The traditional association of love with the spring season (particularly with the month of May) in literature comes to us from the twelfth-century troubadours. The nature introduction (“exordium”) of troubadour poetry/song establishes that springtime weather inspires and bird songs teach the poet to sing to his lady.

Among troubadour poetry/song genres, it was technically associated with the reverdie (“re-greening”), which celebrates the arrival of spring and the renewal of love. Here the poetic speaker encounters beautiful woman, who personifies the spring season, sexual fecundity, and verdant nature. (A typical setting is one where the poet rests day-dreaming in an enchanted, sunlit spring bower, under the blossoms of a tree that shelters singing birds. He calls upon the nightingale to sing and challenges it with an accompaniment with his lute. A good example would be the anonymous troubadour poem/song, “In A Deep Bower Under A Hawthorn-tree.”) In later troubadour ballads, a conventional encounter with the god of Love (Eros) became another component of the genre. The lyrics of the reverdie were often set to music, and they may have functioned as dance-songs. But most importantly for the GS’s musical essays on Beltane/May-Day, it is said that “The reverdie properly belongs to May-Day festivities ….” (Pierre Aubry, Trouvères and Troubadours) A good example is Raimbaut de Vaqueiras’ “Lalenda Maia” (“Calends of May”).

In troubadour philosophy, love (fin’amor) is joy (joi). One of the main thematic contexts in which the term joy most frequently occurs in troubadour poetry/song is the topos of springtime (typically set in April-May). It is the season of blossoming and mating in the natural world, and it inspires the poet with the joy of love and the joy of songwriting (gai saber; joyous science). Joi is a key word in the poetic imagery of the troubadours. Joy is not only a sentimental exultation, but a sensual and erotic pleasure. Moreover, the supreme joy of the troubadour conception of love (fin'amor) is the highest virtue in life.

Here is a sample of some of these nature introductions of troubadour poetry/song:

Since we see, fresh flowers blowing

Field and meadow greenly glowing,

Stream and fountain crystal flowing

Fair wind and breeze,

It’s right each man should live bestowing

Joy as he please.

--William IX of Aquitaine (The Troubadour)

I, who have more joy in my heart,

I truly must sing,

for all my days are joy and song,

thinking of nothing else.

--Bernart De Ventadorn

When flowers bloom near green foliage

and the sky turns serene and clear

and in the forest birds' sweet songs

soften and revive my heart,

each bird with a different melody,

I whose heart is full of joy,

should also sing, for all my days are joy

and song—I think of nothing else.

--Bernart De Ventadorn

I have heard the sweet voice

Of the Nightingale in the woods

And it has pierced to the depths of my heart

So that it sweetens and soothes for me

All the care and the sufferings that love gives me.

And hurt as I am, I truly have need of the joy of others.

Every man who does not dwell in a state of joy

And does not direct his heart and his desire towards love,

Leads a base life, for all that exists abandons itself to joy,

And sounds and resounds:

Meadows, gardens and orchards,

Lands, plains and woods.

--Bernart de Ventadorn

For the sweet song that the nightingale sings,

At night when I am asleep,

I wake quite out of my mind with joy,

Though I think and reflect about love;

For my greatest virtue is that I always welcome joy

And my song begins from joy.

--Bernart de Ventadorn

When the fresh grass and the leaf appear

And the blossom buds on the bough,

And the nightingale high and clear raises his voice

And begins its song, I have joy for it

And joy for the blossom and joy for myself

And greater joy for my lady,

On all sides I am enclosed and encircled by joy,

But this is a joy that conquers all other joys.

--Bernart de Ventadorn

When the nightingale in the foliage gives,

Asks for, and receives love and begins his joyous song,

Rejoicing and often gazing at his mate ...

A great joy settles down in my heart.

--Jaufre Rudel

I love the season of spring

which brings forth leaves and flowers,

and I love, too, hearing the merriment

of birds as they make their song

resound through the woods;

and I love seeing green fields

covered with tents and pavilions;

and great is my joy

when the countryside is lined

with knights and horses and armor.

--Bertran De Born

And be such loves mine in which giving joy I am enjoyed.

For I have there a marvelous joy by which I lie enjoyed and giving joy.

--Jaufre Rudel

Joy through which I am enjoyed.

--Marcabru

For you are the tree and the branch

Upon which ripens the fruit of joy.

You are my first joy, you will also be my last.

Fin'amor is of Joy the summit and the root.

--Marcabru

Not the feast of May

Nor the leaves of the beech

Nor the song of the bird

Nor the gladiola flower

Can please me,

Gay and noble lady,

Until I get an express message

From your beautiful body, which tells me of

A new pleasure that love brings me

And a new joy,

And brings me closer

To you true lady...

--Raimbaut de Vaqueiras

For the troubadour poet, the lady is the supreme source of joy; the joy emanating from the lady's gaze upon the lover, or from glancing at her face:

No joy is comparable to mine

When my lady looks and gazes at me.

By simply showing me her beautiful face

Whenever she may or the place permits,

I am so filled with joy, I am no longer myself.

--Bernart De Ventadorn

But the joy that the lady engenders in the troubadour-lover is also the seasonal joy elicited by Spring's revival, so that to love the lady is to love the natural world itself:

Join in the song,

joy in the flower,

I joy myself,

but in my lady more.

--Bernart De Ventadorn

It pleases me to sing and be refined

For the air is sweet in the season gay

And in the orchards and gardens hedges

I hear the cooling and chattering.

Because of her I love fountains and rivers,

Woods, orchards, fields and gardens,

The ladies, and the excellent and despicable men,

The wise and foolish men, and the simpletons,

Of the noble region where she lives,

And the country around:

For my thoughts are turned so much in that direction

That I do not think that any other land or people exist.

--Raimon de Miraval

When I see the lark fluttering

Its wings for joy against the sun's rays

Until it forgets itself and swoons

From the sweetness that pierces its heart,

Ah such great envy seizes me

Of whatever I see rejoicing,

I marvel that this instant

My heart does not break with desire.

--Bernart De Ventadorn

And the streams are clear and need meadows fair,

because of the new pleasure which prevails.

--Jaufre Rudel

While every creature rejoices at the rebirth of the greenery,

I love the sweet and gentle season when the world is green once more,

for I am cheerful and happy in the joy of the fresh blossoms.

--Arnaut de Marueil

However, the expression of joy in the love song of the troubadours, cannot be separated from its antithetical corollary—sorrow. It is always present in counterpoint, even whenever the poet is singing about joy. Thus troubadour poetry/song is often suffused with a strange mixture of joy and sorrow, emotions that frequently exist side-by-side. This is the natural result of the paradox of love; the rose and the thorns. This is often expressed in the juxtaposition of the spring and winter seasons:

When the days are long in May,

The sweet songs of the birds from far away

Sound lovely to me.

And when I have left them behind,

I call to my mind my far-off love.

Then I go around so depressed and downcast

That neither birdsong nor hawthorn blossom

Can do any more for me than the frozen winter.

--Jaufre Rudel

Though spring’s glorious

Lovely and sweet,

I’m not complete,

Painful defeat

Is mine today,

Through her who holds my heart in play;

So I prize not April or May,

For she blithely turns away

One I honour and love always.

And if I’ve lost my songs so sweet

Those fair words and fine melodies,

I used to make when love was there,

Happiness is I know not where.

--Peire Vidal

Joy in distraction, Spring, April, and May,

Song and garden, orchard, meadow, and field,

Life at the court in the service of love

And man of distinction and nobility,

Year, season, month, and day

Will please me no more....

--Cerveri Girona

By the orchard spring, where grass

grows green near the bank,

beneath the shade of a fruit tree,

surrounded by white flowers,

amid the singing of the new season,

I found there all alone

one who did not want my solace.

She was a maiden, fair of body,

daughter of a castle's lord;

and when I thought the birds,

the verdure and a gentle

springtime would bring her joy

and that she would hear me out,

she suddenly became transformed.

--Marcabru

Yet this supreme joy of the troubadours can even transform winter into spring:

My heart is so full of joy

that all seems changed:

winter's cold transformed to flowers

white, red, and yellow,

for with the wind and with the rain

my joy increases,

and thus my merit mounts and rises

and my song in proves.

Such love lies in my heart,

such joy and sweetness,

that ice seems as flowers

and snow verdure.

--Bernart De Ventadorn

The spring season of renewal and the coming of summer, announced by the songs of the birds, inspire the troubadour to his own song. Thus, a major thematic conceit in troubadour poetry/song is an identification of poet and bird:

When the new flower appears on the branch

And the twigs are all scarlet, green and white,

With all the sweetness that I feel at the changing of the year

I sing like the other birds do;

For in many respects I think of myself as a bird

Because I dare to desire all the best the world has to offer.

I dare to desire her and have a yearning heart

But I dare not speak my heart to her; instead I hide it from her.

--Bertran de Born

With the sweetness of the new season

woods fill with leaves and birds sing

each of them in its own language

set to the verse of a new song,

then is the time a man should bring

himself to that which he most desires.

--William IX of Aquitaine

When the streamlet of the fountain

Again runs clear and sunlight interfused,

When flower of the wild rose is seen,

And the nightingale upon the bough warbles,

Smooths and renews its sweet song,

I too must sweetly renew my own.

--Jaufre Rudel

As the rough season of tempest departs

And the sap rises along the branch

So that the blossom of the heather come to life again,

And the peach trees bloom,

And the frog croaks in the pond,

And the willow and elder bud,

Now that I see this season of dryness at hand

I think deeply about composing a song.

--Marcabru

When the groves are in leaf

And the flower blossoms in the meadow,

I love to hear the birds sweetly singing

In the shade, in the midst of the greenery.

--Marcabru

And the warbling of the birds in the bushes

Shows the how to write courtly verse.

--Guiraut de Bornelh

When cold and ice and snow are put to flight

And warmth returns with fair spring clad in green,

And I hear the trills of the birds,

Such delight do I have in this gentle time

At the end of March that I am livelier

Than the leopard and more fleet of foot than roe or hart.

If the fair lady to whom I am devoted wishes so to honor me

That she would accept me as her loyal suitor,

Then I am the richest and wealthiest of all people.

So full of joy and movement is her body,

So perfect the beauty of the coloring,

That no fresher boom ever blossomed on rose or any bush.

And never Bordeaux never had a lord as merry as I,

If she ever gives me welcome and keeps me for her very own servant.

--Guiraut de Bornelh

Now that the air is fresher and the world turned green,

I shall sing once more of the one I love and desire,

But we are so far apart that I cannot go

And witness how my words might please her.

--Cercamon

When I see the season change

And the leaves and flowers reappear,

Love gives me the ardor,

The heart, and the knowledge to sing.

--Bertran de Born

Since the sweet, flowering season

Spreads its seed, joyful and gay,

The idea has come to my heart to go to work

On composing a new sirventes ....

--Bertran de Born

I see scarlet; green, blue, white, yellow

Garden, close, hill, valley and field,

And songs of birds echo and ring

In sweet accord, at evening and dawn:

They urge my heart to depict in song

Such a flower that its fruit will be amour,

And joy the seed, and the scent a foil to sadness.

--Arnaut Daniel

Of the tiny birds, amidst

The green, the white and multicolored.

So it is right that someone who wishes

Love to help them out should

Begin to behave like a lover.

--Raimon de Miraval