Library › Latin: Lyric & Elegy › Hebet Sidus
Hebet sidus leti visus is an anonymous medieval Latin love lyric in intricate rhyming stanzas. The poet laments that the star of his joyful sight is dimmed by a cloud on his heart and his smile has cooled, because his beloved — the blossoming rod to which his whole heart clings, whose name shines with the light of Phoebe — is hidden from him; he complains of a long solitude and recalls stolen kisses.
The poem displays the virtuosity of twelfth-century Latin song, with its short rhyming lines, bold imagery and learned allusion, and it is preserved in the Carmina Burana. It belongs to the flowering of secular Latin love poetry that paralleled the vernacular lyric of the troubadours.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from The Latin Library, which publishes public-domain texts. Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.