The poems which served as the basis of the secular songs of the 12th and 13th centuries – the songs of the troubadours and trouvères – have been known for a long time, much longer in fact than their music. Very little attention, however, has been paid to the large body of lyrics that forms the foundation for the music of the 14th century, except, of course, for the works of Machaut, which were published in 1909 by V.Chichmareff in his Oeuvres lyriques de Guillaume de Machault. In the present article I should like to discuss the general character and some of the many interesting aspects of the French, Italian and Latin poems that have come down to us in the musical manuscripts of the 14th century as the texts of ballades, rondeaux, virelais, madrigals, or ballatas.