Good Health
The poem is about health. The persona speaks of the things that make a person maintain his good health and those that lead to sickness. Parallelism is drawn between a person with good health and one who is ill.
The persona says, ‘While your energy and excellent strength (As far as was pleasing to your honour)
Reigned in me and was my sovereign,
Then I was well, then I felt no distress,
Then I was stuffed with gladness of spirit,
And now my body is empty and bare
Of joy and full of troubling misery,
All poor in health and rich in tough times
The stanza illustrates that when healthy, we are happy, full of life and industrious. When sick, we become distressed, troubled and empty.
Youthfulness
Youth is blamed by the persona for making bad decisions. The persona points out that most youth do not heed to advice of the elders. The youth are in a rush to novelty and they despise reason and any advice that they are given.
The persona says that when he was a youth, he too was chasing happiness. This led him to the path of excessive eating and drinking and extravagant spending in the taverns and in restaurants. This later made him fall ill because in his rush to novelty, he neglected his health which is the most important treasure to a person.
Friendship
The persona in the poem La Male Regle speaks about his friends in some of the stanzas. The qualities of good friends such as advising their friends to stop going down a treacherous road are brought out. The friends of the persona cautioned him against extravagant spending and excessive consumption in his youth. They warned that continuance in such a behavior would lead to his ruin.
In addition to the qualities of good friends, bad friends ‘qualities are also illustrated. The persona says that once he stopped his extravagant spending in the taverns he lost some of his friends. This shows that bad friends are those who disappear when the going gets tough.
