Li tens est beals la joie est grant. 
 Cil palefrei e cil destrier
 E cil roncin e cil sommier
 Qui errouent par le chemin
 Que menouent cil pelerin
 De totes parz henissant vunt
 Por la grant joie que il unt. 
 Neis par les bois chantouent tuit
 Li oiselet grant et petit.

Li buef les vaches vunt muant
 Par les forez e repaissant. 
 Cors e boisines e fresteals
 E fleutes e chalemeals
 Sonnoent si que les montaignes
 En retintoent et les pleignes. 
 Que esteit dont les plaiseiz
 E des forez e des larriz. 
 En cels par a tel sonneiz
 Com si ce fust cers acolliz.

Entor le mont el bois follu
 Cil travetier unt tres tendu
 Rues unt fait par les chemins. 
 Plentei i out de divers vins
 Pain e pastez fruit e poissons
 Oisels obleies veneisons
 De totes parz aveit a vendre
 Assez en out qui ad que tendre.

The day was clear, without much wind. 
 The maidens and the varlets
 Each of them said verse or song;
 Even the old people go singing;

All have a look of joy. 
 Who knows no more sings hurrah,
 Or god help, or up and on! 
 The minstrels there where they go
 Have all brought their viols;
 Lays and songs playing as they go.

The weather is fine; the joy is great;
 The palfreys and the chargers,
 And the hackneys and the packhorses
 Which wander along the road
 That the pilgrims follow,
 On all sides neighing go,
 For the great joy they feel. 
 Even in the woods sing all
 The little birds, big and small.

The oxen and the cows go lowing
 Through the forests as they feed. 
 Horns and trumpets and shepherd’s pipes
 And flutes and pipes of reed
 Sound so that the mountains
 Echo to them, and the plains. 
 How was it then with the glades
 And with the forests and the pastures? 
 In these there was such sound
 As though it were a stag at bay.

About the Mount, in the leafy wood,
 The workmen have tents set up;
 Streets have made along the roads. 
 Plenty there was of divers wines,
 Bread and pasties, fruit and fish,
 Birds, cakes, venison,
 Everywhere there was for sale. 
 Enough he had who has the means to pay.

If you are not satisfied with this translation, any scholar of French will easily help to make a better, for we are not studying grammar or archaeology, and would rather be inaccurate in such matters than not, if, at that price, a freer feeling of the art could be caught.  Better still, you can turn to Chaucer, who wrote his Canterbury Pilgrimage two hundred years afterwards:—­

Whanne that April with his shoures sote
 The droughte of March hath perced to the rote... 
 Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages
 And palmeres for to seken strange strondes... 
 And especially, from every shires ende
 Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende
 The holy blisful martyr for to seke,
 That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.