When that the priest to you my body bond: Wherefore I will answer in this mannére, With leave of you mine owen lord so dear. I pray to God, that never dawn the day That I ne sterve, as foul as woman may, If e’er I do unto my kin that shame, Or ellës I impairë so my name, That I be false; and if I do that lack, Do strippë me, and put me in a sack, And in the nextë river do me drench: I am a gentle woman, and no wench. Why speak ye thus? but men be e’er untrue, And women have reproof of you aye new. Ye know none other dalliance, I believe, But speak to us of untrust and repreve.” And with that word she saw where Damian Sat in the bush, and coughë she began; And with her finger signë madë she, That Damian should climb upon a tree That charged was with fruit; and up he went: For verily he knew all her intent, And every signë that she couldë make, Better than January her own make. For in a letter she had told him all Of this mattér, how that he workë shall. And thus I leave him sitting in the perry, And January and May roaming full merry.
Bright was the day, and blue the firmament; Phoebus of gold his streamës down had sent To gladden every flow’r with his warmnéss; He was that time in Geminis, I guess, But little from his declinatión Of Cancer, Jovë’s exaltatión. And so befell, in that bright morning-tide, That in the garden, on the farther side, Pluto, that is the king of Faërie, And many a lady in his company Following his wife, the queen Proserpina— Which that he ravished out of Ethna, While that she gather’d flowers in the mead (In Claudian ye may the story read, How in his grisly chariot he her fet)— This king of Faërie adown him set Upon a bank of turfës fresh and green, And right anon thus said he to his queen. “My wife,” quoth he, “there may no wight say nay— Experience so proves it every day— The treason which that woman doth to man. Ten hundred thousand stories tell I can Notáble of your untruth and brittleness. O Solomon, richest of all richéss, Full fill’d of sapience and worldly glory, Full worthy be thy wordës of memóry To every wight that wit and reason can. Thus praised he yet the bounté of man: ‘Among a thousand men yet found I one, But of all women found I never none.’ Thus said this king, that