Though Alexander Agricola's French chansons most often set texts of the old formes fixes, the music he wrote for them rarely bowed to convention. Two contemporary texts, both in fixed forms, begin with S'il vous plaist. The older version was a Bergerette with musical settings from the 1460s and 1470s; Agricola more likely knew its later reworking as a Rondeau. Within that fixed form (refrain, short verse, short refrain, full verse, full refrain), the complete poem presents a conventionally plaintive and somewhat meandering text of courtly love: If she pleases, the speaker will keep the woman forever as his mistress, but she must now take pity on him and his heart can stand no more, but he will not think about her harsh treatment. Several poetic enjambments on the word "but" add to the text's meandering quality. Agricola's musical setting possibly pokes fun at this inept lover. The very texture of S'il vous plaist's three voices gives an unwieldy sound: two very wide-spanned voices overlap in the upper register, high above a bassus. Ornate and lengthy melismas, melodic sequences, and striking leaps characterize the interlocking upper melodies. Two prominent internal cadences close with deceptive motion, as if to embody the text's frustration. The medial cadence, too, falls on the word "but" with nonstandard motion. Furthermore, the hardest melodic leaps (several octaves, uncompensated fifths, and even a seventh leap) and a ridiculously petulant motif repeated in the bass all lie under the fourth line of text, where the speaker asks the woman for pity. The composer's idiosyncratic style seems to deliberately mock him.

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