صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

But yet, for strength of matrimoine,
He mighte make none essoine1

That he ne mote algates plie2
To go to bed of company.

And when they were a-bedde naked,
Withoute sleep he was awaked ;
He turneth on that other side,
For that he would his eyen hide
Fro looking of that foule wight.
The chamber was all full of light;
The curtains were of sendall3 thin:
This newe bride which lay within,
Though it be nought with his accord,
In armes she beclipt her lord,
And pray'd, as he was turned fro,
He would him turn again-ward tho.

66

For "now," she saith, we be both one ;" But he lay still as any stone;

And ever in one she spake and pray'd,

And bade him think on that he said

When that he took her by the hond.

He heard, and understood the bond,

How he was set to his penànce:
And, as it were a man in trance,
He turneth him all suddenly,

And saw a lady lie him by

1 Excuse. Fr.

2 Yield. Fr.

3 Silk.

Of eighteteene winter age',
Which was the fairest of visàge

That ever in all the world he sigh';
And as he would have take her nigh,
She put her hand, and by his leve3
Besought him that he woulde leave,
And say'th, that for to win or lese 1
He mote one of two thinges chese,
Wher he will have her such o'night,
Or elles upon daye's light,

For he shall not have bothe two.

And he began to sorrow tho,

In many a wise, and cast his thought,
But for all that, yet could he nought
Devise himself which was the best:
And she, that would his hearte rest,
Pray'th that he shoulde chuse algate :
Till at the laste, long and late
He said, "O ye, my life's hele',
Say what ye list in my querele,
I n'ot what answer I shall give,
But ever, while that I may live,
I will, that ye be my mistrèss,
For I can nought myselve guess

1 The Saxons always computed time by winters and nights.

[blocks in formation]

Which is the best unto my choice.
Thus grant I you mine whole voice:
Chuse for us bothen, I you pray!
And, what as ever that ye say,
Right as ye wille, so will I."

"My lord," she saide, "grand-merci'!
For of this word that ye now sayn,
That ye have made me sovereign,
My destiny is over passed;

That never hereafter shall be lassed'
My beauty, which that I now have,
Till I betake unto my grave.
Both night and day, as I am now,
I shall alway be such to you.
The kinges daughter of Sicile
I am; and fell 3 but sith a while,
As I was with my father late,
That my step-mother, for an hate
Which toward me she hath begun,
For-shope, till I hadde won
The love and the sovereinety
Of what knight that in his degree
All other passeth of good name :
And, as men seyn, ye be the same,

1 Many thanks.

2 Lessened.

3 It befell.

4 Mis-shaped.

The deede proveth it is so.
Thus am I yours for evermo."

Tho was pleasànce and joy enough;
Each one with other play'd and lough1;
They lived long, and well they far'd,
And clerkes, that this chance heard,
They written it in evidence,
To teach, how that obedience

May well fortune a man to love,
And set him in his lust above.

(Fol. 15, ed. 1532.)

1 Laughed.

VOL. I.

M

162

CHAPTER VIII.

Reign of Edward III. continued.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER has had many biographers; but the authentic documents respecting his life are so few, that his last editor, Mr. Tyrwhitt, to whom this great poet will be principally indebted for the rational admiration of posterity, has contented himself with a bare recital of the following genuine anecdotes, instead of attempting to work them into a connected narrative, in which much must have been supplied by mere conjecture, or by a forced interpretation of the allusions scattered through the works of the poet.

The original inscription on his tombstone is said to have proved that he died in 1400, aged 72, so that he was born in 1328; and he has himself told us that his birth-place was London. Of his family we know absolutely nothing. From a passage in his Court of Love, where he calls himself " Philogenet of Cambridge, clerk,” it may be inferred that he was educated in that university; and it is presumed that he was afterwards entered at the Inner Temple, because the records of that inn are said to state that he was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet-street 1.

1 Mr. Ritson (Bibliogr. Poet. p. 19, note) says that this anecdote is "a hum of Thomas Chatterton." See his Miscellanies, p. 137.— But as the story is related in Speght's editions of Chaucer (1598, 1602), on the evidence of a Master Buckley, it remains for Mr. Ritson to prove that what he elegantly calls Chatterton's hum has had a retroactive effect on the understanding of the said Master Buckley, who lived, and probably died, in the 16th century.

« السابقةمتابعة »