Like a Politician (Lines 8-14)

For al be that I knowe nat Love in dede,
Ne wot how that he quiteth folk here hyre,
Yit happeth me ful ofte in bokes reede
Of his myrakles and his cruel yre.
Ther rede I wel he wol be lord and syre,
I dar not seyn, his strokes been so sore,
But, "God save swich a lord!" - I can na more.

in dede - in practice; quiteth - reward; But - i.e., anything but

After the opening stanza with its paradoxical rhetorical flourishes about love, the speaker admits that he doesn't actually have any direct experience. So we're going to spend the next 700 lines listening to him talk about something he knows nothing about. Excellent.

Well, he does know something: what he's read. (As we'll find out in a little bit, he's quite the reader.) He describes love as, beyond the an angry lord, so powerful that he dare not say anything about it beyond a pleasantry, "God save him." So love doesn't always work out -- that's an idea we should stow away to refer back to in 680-odd lines.