The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems Part 105

You made, and think that all is but a fair, This world that pa.s.seth soon, as flowers fair!

And love Him, the which that, right for love, Upon a cross, our soules for to bey,* *buy, redeem First starf,* and rose, and sits in heav'n above; *died For he will false* no wight, dare I say, *deceive, fail That will his heart all wholly on him lay; And since he best to love is, and most meek, What needeth feigned loves for to seek?

Lo! here of paynims* cursed olde rites! *pagans Lo! here what all their G.o.ddes may avail!

Lo! here this wretched worlde's appet.i.tes! *end and reward Lo! here the *fine and guerdon for travail,* of labour*

Of Jove, Apollo, Mars, and such rascaille* *rabble <93> Lo! here the form of olde clerkes' speech, In poetry, if ye their bookes seech!* *seek, search

L'Envoy of Chaucer.

O moral Gower! <94> this book I direct.

To thee, and to the philosophical Strode, <95> To vouchesafe, where need is, to correct, Of your benignities and zeales good.

And to that soothfast Christ that *starf on rood* *died on the cross*

With all my heart, of mercy ever I pray, And to the Lord right thus I speak and say:

"Thou One, and Two, and Three, *etern on live,* *eternally living*

That reignest ay in Three, and Two, and One, Uncirc.u.mscrib'd, and all may'st circ.u.mscrive,* *comprehend From visible and invisible fone* *foes Defend us in thy mercy ev'ry one; So make us, Jesus, *for thy mercy dign,* *worthy of thy mercy*

For love of Maid and Mother thine benign!"

Explicit Liber Troili et Cresseidis. <96>

Notes to Troilus and Cressida

1. The double sorrow: First his suffering before his love was successful; and then his grief after his lady had been separated from him, and had proved unfaithful.

2. Tisiphone: one of the Eumenides, or Furies, who avenged on men in the next world the crimes committed on earth. Chaucer makes this grim invocation most fitly, since the Trojans were under the curse of the Eumenides, for their part in the offence of Paris in carrying off Helen, the wife of his host Menelaus, and thus impiously sinning against the laws of hospitality.

3. See Chaucer's description of himself in "The House Of Fame," and note 11 to that poem.

4. The Palladium, or image of Pallas (daughter of Triton and foster-sister of Athena), was said to have fallen from heaven at Troy, where Ilus was just beginning to found the city; and Ilus erected a sanctuary, in which it was preserved with great honour and care, since on its safety was supposed to depend the safety of the city. In later times a Palladium was any statue of the G.o.ddess Athena kept for the safeguard of the city that possessed it.

5. "Oh, very G.o.d!": oh true divinity! -- addressing Cressida.

6. Ascaunce: as if to say -- as much as to say. The word represents "Quasi dicesse" in Boccaccio. See note 5 to the Sompnour's Tale.

7. Eft: another reading is "oft."

8. Arten: constrain -- Latin, "arceo."

9. The song is a translation of Petrarch's 88th Sonnet, which opens thus: "S'amor non e, che dunque e quel ch'i'sento."

10. If maugre me: If (I burn) in spite of myself. The usual reading is, "If harm agree me" = if my hurt contents me: but evidently the ant.i.thesis is lost which Petrarch intended when, after "s'a mia voglia ardo," he wrote "s'a mal mio grado" = if against my will; and Urry's Glossary points out the probability that in transcription the words "If that maugre me" may have gradually changed into "If harm agre me."

11. The Third of May seems either to have possessed peculiar favour or significance with Chaucer personally, or to have had a special importance in connection with those May observances of which the poet so often speaks. It is on the third night of May that Palamon, in The Knight's Tale, breaks out of prison, and at early morn encounters in the forest Arcita, who has gone forth to pluck a garland in honour of May; it is on the third night of May that the poet hears the debate of "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale"; and again in the present pa.s.sage the favoured date recurs.

12. Went: turning; from Anglo-Saxon, "wendan;" German, "wenden." The turning and tossing of uneasy lovers in bed is, with Chaucer, a favourite symptom of their pa.s.sion. See the fifth "statute," in The Court of Love.

13. Procne, daughter of Pandion, king of Attica, was given to wife to Tereus in reward for his aid against an enemy; but Tereus dishonoured Philomela, Procne's sister; and his wife, in revenge, served up to him the body of his own child by her.

Tereus, infuriated, pursued the two sisters, who prayed the G.o.ds to change them into birds. The prayer was granted; Philomela became a nightingale, Procne a swallow, and Tereus a hawk.

14. Fished fair: a proverbial phrase which probably may be best represented by the phrase "done great execution."

15. The fair gem virtueless: possessing none of the virtues which in the Middle Ages were universally believed to be inherent in precious stones.

16. The crop and root: the most perfect example. See note 29 to the Knight's Tale.

17. Eme: uncle; the mother's brother; still used in Lancas.h.i.+re.

Anglo-Saxon, "eame;" German, "Oheim."

18. Darda.n.u.s: the mythical ancestor of the Trojans, after whom the gate is supposed to be called.

19. All the other gates were secured with chains, for better defence against the besiegers.

20. Happy day: good fortune; French, "bonheur;" both "happy day" and "happy hour" are borrowed from the astrological fiction about the influence of the time of birth.

21. Horn, and nerve, and rind: The various layers or materials of the s.h.i.+eld -- called boagrion in the Iliad -- which was made from the hide of the wild bull.

22. His brother: Hector.

23. Who gives me drink?: Who has given me a love-potion, to charm my heart thus away?

24. That plaited she full oft in many a fold: She deliberated carefully, with many arguments this way and that.

25. Through which I mighte stand in worse plight: in a worse position in the city; since she might through his anger lose the protection of his brother Hector.

26. I am not religious: I am not in holy vows. See the complaint of the nuns in "The Court of Love."

27. The line recalls Milton's "dark with excessive bright."

28. No weal is worth, that may no sorrow drien: the meaning is, that whosoever cannot endure sorrow deserves not happiness.

29. French, "verre;" gla.s.s.

30. From cast of stones ware him in the werre: let him beware of casting stones in battle. The proverb in its modern form warns those who live in gla.s.s houses of the folly of throwing stones.

31. Westren: to west or wester -- to decline towards the west; so Milton speaks of the morning star as sloping towards heaven's descent "his westering wheel."

32. A pike with a.s.s's feet etc.: this is merely another version of the well-known example of incongruity that opens the "Ars Poetica" of Horace.

33. Tristre: tryst; a preconcerted spot to which the beaters drove the game, and at which the sportsmen waited with their bows.

34. A kankerdort: a condition or fit of perplexed anxiety; probably connected with the word "kink" meaning in sea phrase a twist in an rope -- and, as a verb, to twist or entangle.

35. They feel in times, with vapour etern: they feel in their seasons, by the emission of an eternal breath or inspiration (that G.o.d loves, &c.)

36. The idea of this stanza is the same with that developed in the speech of Theseus at the close of The Knight's Tale; and it is probably derived from the lines of Boethius, quoted in note 91 to that Tale.