Playful Poems | Page 6

snow-white swan,
And could repeat a tale
told by a man,
And sing. No nightingale, down in a dell,
Could sing
one-hundred-thousandth part so well.

Now had this Phoebus in his house a wife
Which that he loved
beyond his very life:
And night and day did all his diligence
To
please her well, and do her reverence;
Save only, to speak truly, inter
nos,
Jealous he was, and would have kept her close:
He wished not
to be treated monstrously:
Neither does any man, no more than he;

Only to hinder wives, it serveth nought; -
A good wife, that is clean
of work and thought,
No man would dream of hindering such a way.

And just as bootless is it, night or day,
Hindering a shrew; for it
will never be.
I hold it for a very foppery,
Labour in vain, this toil
to hinder wives,
Old writers always say so, in their Lives.
But to my story, as it first began.
This worthy Phoebus doeth all he
can
To please his wife, in hope, so pleasing her,
That she, for her
part, would herself bestir
Discreetly, so as not to lose his grace;
But,
Lord he knows, there's no man shall embrace
A thing so close, as to
restrain what Nature
Hath naturally set in any creature.
Take any bird, and put it in a cage,
And do thy best and utmost to
engage
The bird to love it; give it meat and drink,
And every dainty
housewives can bethink,
And keep the cage as cleanly as you may,

And let it be with gilt never so gay,
Yet had this bird, by
twenty-thousand-fold,
Rather be in a forest wild and cold,
And feed
on worms and suchlike wretchedness;
Yea, ever will he tax his whole
address
To get out of the cage when that he may:-
His liberty the
bird desireth aye.
So, take a cat, and foster her with milk
And tender meat, and make
her bed of silk,
Yet let her see a mouse go by the wall,
The devil
may take, for her, silk, milk, and all,
And every dainty that is in the
house;
Such appetite hath she to eat the mouse.

Lo, here hath
Nature plainly domination,
And appetite renounceth education.
A she-wolf likewise hath a villain's kind:
The worst and roughest
wolf that she can find,
Or least of reputation, will she wed,
When

the time comes to make her marriage-bed.
But misinterpret not my speech, I pray;
All this of men, not women,
do I say;
For men it is, that come and spoil the lives
Of such, as but
for them, would make good wives.
They leave their own wives, be
they never so fair,
Never so true, never so debonair,
And take the
lowest they may find, for change.
Flesh, the fiend take it, is so given
to range,
It never will continue, long together,
Contented with good,
steady, virtuous weather.
This Phoebus, while on nothing ill thought he,
Jilted he was, for all
his jollity;
For under him, his wife, at her heart's-root,
Another had,
a man of small repute,
Not worth a blink of Phoebus; more's the pity;

Too oft it falleth so, in court and city.
This wife, when Phoebus
was from home one day,
Sent for her lemman then, without delay.

Her lemman!--a plain word, I needs must own;
Forgive it me; for
Plato hath laid down,
The word must suit according with the deed;

Word is work's cousin-german, ye may read:
I'm a plain man, and
what I say is this:
Wife high, wife low, if bad, both do amiss:
But
because one man's wench sitteth above,
She shall be called his Lady
and his Love;
And because t'other's sitteth low and poor,
She shall
be called,--Well, well, I say no more;
Only God knoweth, man, mine
own dear brother,
One wife is laid as low, just, as the other.
Right so betwixt a lawless, mighty chief
And a rude outlaw, or an
arrant thief,
Knight arrant or thief arrant, all is one;
Difference, as
Alexander learnt, there's none;
But for the chief is of the greater
might,
By force of numbers, to slay all outright,
And burn, and
waste, and make as flat as floor,
Lo, therefore is he clept a conqueror;

And for the other hath his numbers less,
And cannot work such
mischief and distress,
Nor be by half so wicked as the chief,

Men
clepen him an outlaw and a thief.
However, I am no text-spinning man;
So to my tale I go, as I began.

Now with her lemman is this Phoebus' wife;
The crow he sayeth
nothing, for his life;
Caged hangeth he, and sayeth not a word;
But
when that home was come Phoebus the lord,
He singeth out, and
saith,--"Cuckoo! cuckoo!"
"Hey!" crieth Phoebus, "here be something
new;
Thy song was wont to cheer me. What is this?"
"By Jove!"
quoth Corvus, "I sing not amiss.
Phoebus," quoth he; "for all thy
worthiness,
For all thy beauty and all thy gentilesse,
For all thy
song and all thy minstrelsy,
And all thy watching, bleared is thine eye;

Yea, and by one no worthier than a gnat,
Compared with him
should boast to wear thine hat."
What would you more? the crow hath told him all;
This woful god
hath turned him to the wall
To hide his tears: