Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 1400)
English author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat, and diplomat.
Up rose the sonne, and up rose Emelie.
And yet he had a thomb of gold parde.
Therfore bihoveth hire a ful long spoon
That shal ete with a feend.
Yet in our ashen cold is fire yreken.
Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder.
Go, little booke! go, my little tragedie!
For gold in phisike is a cordial;
Therefore he loved gold in special.
Chaucer, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on him, I think obscene, and contemptible, he owes his celebrity, merely to his antiquity, which he does not deserve so well as Pierce Plowman, or Thomas of Ercildoune.
Forbede us thing, and that desiren we;
Preesse on us faste, and thanne wol we flee.
With daunger oute we al oure chaffare:
Greet prees at market maketh dere ware,
And too greet chepe is holden at litel pris.
The gretest clerkes ben not the wisest men.
His studie was but litel on the Bible.
That field hath eyen, and the wood hath ears.
But yet that holden this tale a folly,
As of a fox, or of a cock and hen,
Taketh the morality, good men.
For Saint Paul saith that all that written is,
To our doctrine it is y-writ, ywis;
Taketh the fruit, and let the chaff be still.
For him was lever han at his beddes hed
A twenty bokes, clothed in black or red,
Of Aristotle, and his philosophie,
Than robes riche, or fidel, or sautrie.
But all be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre.
Allas! allas! that evere love was synne!
In his owen grese I made him frie.
What maketh this, but Juppiter the kyng,
That is prince and cause of alle thyng
Convertynge al unto his propre welle
From which it is deryved, sooth to telle,
And heer-agayns no creature on lyve
Of no degree availleth for to strive.
Ye knowe eek, that in forme of speche is chaunge
Withinne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden prys, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do;
Eek for to winne love in sondry ages,
In sondry londes, sondry ben usages.
And of his port as meke as is a mayde.
For I am shave as neigh as any frere.
But yit I praye unto youre curteisye:
Beeth hevy again, or elles moot I die.