Playful Poems | Page 6

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: he thought 'twould burst his heart;?He bent his bow, and set therein a dart,?And in his ire he hath his wife yslain;?He hath; he felt such anger and such pain;?For sorrow of which he brake his minstrelsy,?Both harp and lute, gittern and psaltery,?And then he brake his arrows and his bow,?And after that, thus spake he to the crow:-
"Traitor," quoth he, "behold what thou hast done;?Made me the saddest wretch beneath the sun:?Alas! why was I born! O dearest